tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10700868325774276752014-10-06T18:56:02.807-06:00So, let me tell you a story...Minnesota to D.C. to the highlands of Guatemala. And then to ... well, we'll see where this story goes.Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.comBlogger34125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-38722808488490098692012-01-20T12:16:00.000-06:002012-08-14T23:27:35.449-06:00Neanderthal lost in D.C.I have seen the extent to which the world has moved ahead without me. A colleague leads me, bewildered behind her, down endless streets of enormous, stately buildings and down the direction-defying lefts, rights, ups, downs of the city metro system – just deciding which way to walk is a challenge. I learned, at least well enough to do it all by myself later, but of course feigning to everyone around me that I knew <i>exactly</i> what I was doing.<br />All the cell phones, all the apps, the ability to look at a map, check an email, find a restaurant’s address and ratings, look up a book to find it in the bookstore you’re in, even use your phone in place of a boarding pass for a flight… it’s all so convenient but makes me feel so uneasy! It feels as though the world has moved on and left me behind it, lost in the bustle and buzz of a city at work.<br />I see store window after store window of sleek, well-crafted clothes the likes of which I haven’t seen in a few years, sturdy-looking and chic shoes that probably wouldn’t fall apart on me in a few months, oodles of “Food Court” setups (with not a single restaurant chain name I recognize) in what seems like every office or state building complex I pass, and I wonder if I will ever be the kind of city person who patronizes those kinds of places and is that kind of consumer… do I want to be?<br />And everything can painlessly be paid for with a quick swipe of a credit card, and nothing more, no need to bother tallying up your totals if you don’t wish to – that’s what the bank statements are for. And this is only if one bothers with a card; many use their phones for that too. As for me, I haven’t used my credit card for anything but buying plane tickets online in the last three years; the ease with which people at the cash register swipe, hand it back, and smile at the next person with a “Can I help you?” makes me uneasy, like Aren’t we missing something still? Aren’t transactions usually more than that? Perhaps I’m too accustomed to barter systems.<br />I am left feeling like a child, naïve to these sophisticated, “first-world” city ways. I am awkward, get easily confused, concentrate hard on learning, and make mistakes often.<br />But I would like to see one of those who would scoff at my ignorance, in an attempt to navigate the Guatemala bus system. In that arena, I am expertly aware of where I must go to get on and what I must do <i>when</i>, to get off; the kind of complicated and emotional transaction I can anticipate; strategies to employ to ensure paying a fair price; and especially on the alert for anomalies that could lead to unforeseen security situations to handle. Your iPhone and credit card can make purchases black-and-white for you, but I’ve seen the amazement in other people’s faces as I employ all the tactics to negotiate shades of gray, to for example talk down a market vender to a price we can both agree on, which would have seemed impossible given her original price quote. Your earbuds plugging your auditory canals have precluded any need to socialize more than necessary with anyone you’d rather not talk to, but you wouldn’t know the first thing to say to get your neighbors (or potential renters) to trust you, like you, welcome you, and have reason to always treat you fairly. I’m always itching to show people my world. I’m sort of proud of how skillfully I navigate it, no matter how stone-age it may seem.<br />Are these skills useful? Arguably, outside of this developing-world informal rural economy, no. But neither do the skills employed by every technobot (oops, I mean person…) walking down a D.C. street, seem difficult to acquire. That kind of complexity is accessible – if you wanted, you could read or download a manual for most of that, or buy a “(Fill in the blank) for Dummies” book on it. The rural kind of complexity is more about layers of understanding, hierarchy, and trust gained through experience and a keen memory, or good mental note-taking. Even if it's not terribly useful beyond this context, surely this learning curve adaptability could be applicable to other contexts.<br />So it is that I come to realize, we all live in our own jungles – seemingly inexplicable messes that, upon examination, have an order and a rhythm. There are always, always layers of nuance and complexity that outsiders aren’t going to understand at first; we humans create that complexity through varying degrees of hierarchy and social mobility, I suppose whether it be Wall Street or a prison or an aboriginal tribe. I think this is what we call culture, never easy to adapt from one to another.<br />Today my taxi-driver caused me to reflect on this idea. His English was an African English, not an African-American English, and I so wanted to ask him where he was from (like, what country). But, thinking back to how much that question bothers me as a non-native to Guatemala (and how yes, it’s probably an accent that provokes the question), and not wishing to sound like a xenophobic upper-class yuppy by asking him and implying that he must not belong here, I held my tongue. I couldn’t think then of a decent way of asking, but now I wish I had said something like, Your accent is that of an educated African… Where are you from, what compelled you to leave, and why in the world are you just driving a taxi?? &nbsp; It seems he must have left his culture and his social landscape, where he knew all the ins and outs, and come here and had to learn a whole new set – worse, with the odds stacked against him as a black man and as an immigrant. I reflect on all the things he could probably show someone about <i>both</i> of those worlds in which he’s learned to operate.<br />With time and the right proactive attitude, we can probably all learn to deal with and to function in any unfamiliar environment. But I’m beginning to reflect on whether or not it’s really beneficial to keep requiring that of ourselves. How many adjustments to new “jungles” will the average human being make in a lifetime in today’s world? And to what degree? Surely the adaptation from a high school experience to moving to college, is not the same magnitude of change as a move from an African village to Washington D.C.<br />But what concerns me most is the feeling that this requirement to adapt to “culture shock” if we can call it that, is no longer implied only by a geographic move; I get the sense that the modernized world is moving toward a constant state of adaptation to our own constantly-changing culture. There is always far too much for me to catch up on every time I visit the U.S., that at this point it’s simply overwhelming, and I no longer even really try. Will I <i>always</i> feel like a Neanderthal, even in my own country, even with the latest gizmos, even with the latest apps, even with the most recent 12.0 version of street-smarts? This is why I come away from a lovely little visit to the big city feeling more intimidated already about the next time I’ll have to go back. &nbsp;How long did you say my Visa is good for??Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-83124244411034716952011-08-07T18:46:00.000-06:002011-09-30T20:32:15.578-06:00Anniversary of birth, not necessarily just one dayMy what a wonderful week that was! I was certainly celebrating my own aging quite a lot the days before and weeks after, my birthday. Six or seven cakes, big candles, fireworks and mountain hikes here we come!It all started Saturday the 9th, though that is not my birthday and it was not my birthday party; it was a self-thrown birthday party for Jesse, a volunteer in the next town over who had invited pretty much all PCVs in the area for a whole day of activities: Mayan ceremony on the roof between rainstorms, followed by street-food dinner, followed by cake, followed by a themed dance-party in his house, with a hired DJ. He maintains he was sharing the birthday party with me, which I appreciated.The next morning I took two new volunteers (site-mates) on a hike with my ex-host brothers (16 and 8, such fun company) up to the highest peak around, back in the communal forest. We got soaked in the cats-n-dogs downpour on the way back down, stopped in at my old house for a breather (which, you’ll recall, is halfway down the mountain) where we dried out a bit and were fed Toto’s version of apple pie: seasonal peaches and cherries “en dulce” meaning cooked in sweet sauce, like peach syrup. Yum. We then hiked the rest of the way down back into town (thanks to a lack of cars to hitch-hike on a Sunday) to another site-mate’s house, where they were waiting for us to all make lunch together, have a few drinks, eat the cake they made, etc. Nice day. A friend and I went walking around town that afternoon, since for some reason a small contingent of Feria-type stands were clustered in the streets (do the Catholics here celebrate the Feast of Saint Benedict, for some reason?). We ate some churros, and then I was invited to a piece of cake at a local cafe since I wasn’t going to be around the actual day of my birthday. It’s apparently a bigger deal here to celebrate it on the actual day; rescheduling and rain checks just make people feel cheated out of the fun!The next morning – the big day! a quarter-century! – I was up early in my room packing for my trip, and Doña Emiliana, my landlady/housemate/hostmom knocks and wonders if I have a minute, and a lighter. Um… yes, I guess, on both counts. This being about 6:15 am on a Monday. She has a big candle. Like, the size of a chair leg. She lights it, and invites me to kneel with her on a rug in the middle of the expansive main room as she prays that the Lord bless me, protect me, and that he receive her thanks and the thanks of many others for having put me in their lives, that I continue to be successful in my endeavors, that I not feel sad for not having my real family with me because I have so many family members now here, etc etc. I tried not to cry, but failed a little. It was such a beautiful expression of her friendship and love for me.I then received a phone call in the early morn: Las Mañanitas, the typical birthday morning song! “Estas son las mañanitas que cantaba el Rey David… a las muchachas bonitas, te las cantamos aquí!” I’m just surprised it wasn’t at 5a.m. which is the normal time to wake someone up with this birthday ditty!Shortly thereafter my friend Andrea came by, a little early for when we were supposed to meet on the corner to go running together, because she had a big birthday card in her hands she had made the night before, and a big smile on her face too. We went running, the first time she had been on a run in 6 months, and the first time in Toto, so I was showing her one of my favorite routes through a quiet little outlying suburb of town (although quiet little suburb does NOT mean the same thing here as it would in the states…). When we arrived back, Doña Emiliana invited us into the kitchen for a quick breakfast together, and wouldn’t you know there was cake!! I think that brings the total to three now…But I had to leave, get on a bus for four hours and go to the Peace Corps Center, but upon arriving in the town I bought a big cake myself at a store, and then arriving at the Center, quickly went to everybody’s offices, the lunch lounge, the local restaurant etc. where all the staff were to share cake with them. I then hustled on a bus to Antigua to meet up with the Common Hope social worker, and we were off out to the town where my folks’ new “godchild” lives, whom we met in December for the first time, when they all came to visit. She and I share a birthday; she turned 15 and I, 25, so we had planned for me to go visit, bring her books as a birthday present, and translate a letter for her from my parents. It’s usually a little awkward with a family who’s Spanish isn’t great, and the girl is so shy she’s not one for conversation, but I’m so used to that docility and having to make conversation at this point, that I didn’t find it awkward at all; rather, we discussed things like differences in words in Kaqchikel (their language) vs. K’iche’ (Toto and other neighboring province’s language, which I know some of). She liked the books quite a bit, even if her mom saw little practicality in them.I then went back through Antigua to San Antonio Aguas Calientes, my old training town, to Patty’s house, my best (Guatemalan) friend. She, her family and I made a mile-high veggie pizza for dinner, and they set off fireworks unexpectedly in the patio, which almost gave me a heart attack, and then we ate one of the two cakes that had mistakenly been bought for the occasion! So, you keeping track of how many cakes that makes?I left super-early the Tuesday morning that followed, to get all the way back out to the highlands to one of the towns near the Lago de Atitlán, where my Peace Corps program director (APCD Flavio) and a couple of us volunteers were to give a teacher training on environmental education. It went till midday, then we all went out for lunch with our APCD afterwards (followed by a desert that, thankfully, wasn’t cake!), and he gave me a ride all the way back to my house, which is in itself enough of a gift, considering the two hours on 3 buses it would’ve otherwise implied!Whereupon I found flowers in my room and a big “Feliz Cumpleaños” on the wall of my room; and the preparations for a big dinner ensued, which I was totally unaware of. The guest list? Doña Emiliana, her sister and their family, Doña Emiliana’s daughter and her family, and some of my close friends that Doña Emiliana knows well enough to have invited. The agenda? A small speech or “Palabras” (“words”) given by almost everyone, about me. The menu? Steak and mashed potatoes, followed by peaches and cherries en dulce, followed by… one of the two identical cakes that had accidentally been bought by two people who failed to coordinate for the occasion. The 20-month-old baby asked where the piñata was :) I think I’m too old, that must be why no one got one for me… that was the only thing missing, after all.So this was Tuesday… and Thursday of the same week is my former host-brother’s birthday, the one who escorted us up the mountain the previous Sunday. So what did I do? Took a cake up the mountain for birthday dinner at my old host family’s house. Duh! But wouldn´t you know, they wouldn’t let me offer to contribute anything else to the meal, which they normally do, so I suspected that this birthday dinner was not going to be entirely and singularly for José Arnulfo. Sure enough, they insisted on singing Happy Birthday to me too! And there was another cake… oh dear. But I must say, I do love staying the night there every once in a while. It still feels like home though I haven’t lived there in a year, and it always makes for quite lovely running the next morning of my familiar haunts on the trails in the communal forest.Perhaps a week later, I was down in one of the “suburbs” of Toto for lunch visiting some new friends I was getting to know. They had found out through some offhand comment of mine (probably about how my schedule had been busy due to so many engagements, and how running more was becoming a necessity due to so much cake intake) that I had recently had a birthday… so what was there after lunch? You guessed it – my 11th birthday cake. Appropriate, don’t you think, for a birthday on the 11th of the month!So how’s that for a birthday odyssey? Whew!! I’ll be lucky if any of my pants fit me next week! Which is hardly the point, since in my opinion birthdays were made for cavalier cake and ice cream consumption. Seems I REALLY got my birthday wish this year!Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-90337159108929085692011-06-17T18:32:00.003-06:002011-06-17T20:51:21.707-06:00Se fue de vacacionesThat means, "She left on vacation"... a common phrase here, it seems, to explain the inexplicable absence of that person you really needed to be there for a project, a meeting, a workshop, or to approve something. It generally is the expression of choice to imply ambiguity of start date and end date of this extended vacation the person in question is on, intended to frustrate you to high hell in the face of sublime inability to DO anything about her being gone. And that's what people have been saying about ME for the last month. Can't tell you how wonderful it felt to be the one on vacation for once!!<br />Yes indeed, it was a good month to be home in Minnesota. In time to see the tulips in their splendor, the lilacs come and go, and the apple trees blossom, leaving their perfume on every breeze that blows by. In time for that crazy string of weather (record tornados? 101 degrees one day, and 67 the next?), but there were enough beautiful, sunny days to get in lots of biking, running, paddling and even sailing! I remember that when the plane finally lowered enough to burst through the last bit of dreary Minnesotan cloud, and a dark and rainy cityscape became visible, the first thing I noticed was that lovely spring green…! That green newness doesn’t happen in Guatemala, and there’s nothing like watching that big oak out back of the cabin – that large, commanding, tough old edifice! – bud out with teensy new leaves like babies’ hands, as if it were time to show the world the tenderness lying within. <br />And there was business to attend to…there were three graduations to partake in, three birthday parties to bake cakes for, a grad party or two, a 60th anniversary party (for two people whose marriage means I exist, so it was important to be there!), and then there were the extra-curriculars. The Roske Family Sauk River Trip was once again organized on a beautiful Saturday to see all the sights there are to see on that stretch of gentle current from Rockville, Minnesota to Waite Park. You know, trees newly-fallen in the water to make the obstacle course more interesting. New lawn ornaments or docks which the riparian property-owners have put out. Barns. Silos. Bridges. New models of farm machinery working in the fields adjacent to the stream’s course. Fun stuff!<br />But you Nebraskans out there, I have to say those canoe-trip sights were a fair bit more interesting than the stretch of highway between Dakota/Iowa and our destination state of Colorado on the 2011 Roske Family Go-West Trip. (Lots of random traditions, you’ll catch on one of these days.) I mean I guess you Nebraskans try to mix it up, as I recall, via the bizarre statues that have been erected along the freeway just to make people wake up from their driving stupor, swing their head around and think, “Did I really just see a huge bull’s-head statue back there?” causing all kinds of lane-crossing mayhem, maybe some accidents. It’s a start, Nebraska.<br />Colorado kept the mountains out of view for a tantalizingly long time, and we only had a good view of them on our second or third day there! Denver is, as most of you have already known for quite some time, a quite agreeable city. I wish my freshly-graduated brother and his sweetheart lots of luck with their move out there, but it doesn’t sound like it’s going too poorly. They’ll be fine, in as fine a city as Denver. <br />We were invited out to my good friend Oliver’s house for dinner one evening – yes, WE, all six participants of the Roske Family Go-West Trip – and met his very gracious parents, an aunt, and some other friends. It was just generally a feast and catch-up time, and I suppose also a way for the recently immigrated residents (brother and sweetheart) to get a read on housing options in the area. Karli, Oliver’s mom, casually comments, <br /> “So, you guys are looking for a place to live out here too, huh?”<br /> “Well, that’s the idea,” says my brother. “We’re still sort of looking around, checking out the options.”<br /> “Huh. Well, yeah, you should be able to find something nice,” she finishes absently.<br /> “Yeah, that’s the hope…”<br />… a long pause, other side-conversations carry on, and then Karli bursts in, to her son Oliver:<br /> “Hey, wait, don’t Billie and her husband need somebody to house-sit for them? I mean, they go to Aspen every summer and leave the house in Denver for a few months… [to my brother:] Want their number?”<br /> “Um… well yeah, that’d be great!”<br />So you see it never hurts to mooch off your sister for people to talk to about jobs, housing, etc. But it seems restaurant options are just no longer something you consult with locals you know. Smartphones, being far smarter than me, apparently have a corner on the restaurant rating and location market. I was made to feel stupid and useless more than once by those things! But yes, my brother’s smartphone led us to a few delectable little places, so there’s no reason to complain about the human brain being technologically obsolete, I suppose. Except in the wilderness. Thwarted by lack of cell signal in Rocky Mountain National Park, I think we all regained our sense of worth in that snub little victory over the smartphone! Haha, I had also spent three of my days in Denver renewing my Wilderness First Responder (WFR) certification, but with the advent of these smartphones, the ubiquity of personal GPS car units, and the possible power a satellite-based hybrid of the two could have if it’s invented and marketed on a commercial level by the time I move back to Minnesota next March, of what good will my high level of wilderness first aid training be if all that info is accessible online even in the wilderness? Hm. The plus side of renewing my WFR is that I met about 30 interesting outdoorsy-type folks from all over Colorado. Ski guides, kayakers, hikers, bikers, rafting guides, canoeists, horseback-riders, sailing guides, outdoor educators, mountain climbers, National Park Service employees, you name it! My kind of crowd. But I don’t know anything about skiing, kayaking, and rafting which seemed to be the top interests of everybody there! Yeah well – let’s see them portage a canoe :) One thing I couldn’t help but take away from that course, was a sense of awakening the part of myself that used to thrive on guiding wilderness activities, that hasn’t been around since… well, since I moved to Guatemala. The part of my character that pushed me to go work in Alaska, to be a Voyageurs guide, and any number of other activities in which I used to excel and through which my heart used to feel set free. I realized I miss it all so much. Everything around me in Colorado reminded me of a more populated (and tamer?) version of Denali, and I began to think back on and miss the wonderful people who were my life there. I began to crave an intimacy with every mountain and moraine I saw too, like I had felt in Denali and not since.<br />And it’s funny the way we can feel a connection with places on this earth, for entirely different reasons. I thought the familiar mountains, valleys, ridgelines and volcano peaks of the Guatemalan highlands held that kind of special chest-swelling significance for me, but neither these nor the breathtaking scenery of the Colorado Rockies will ever compare in my eyes to the woods and lakes of Minnesota. There is nothing in the world that could ever compare, in my ears’ opinion, to the call of a loon. No small pleasure like catching sight of a red fox or sandhill crane in the woods, watch a beaver diligently go about his business – even better if the catching-sight-of was the work of not one but two people, out for a walk or a paddle or a bike ride. There is something admirable in going fishing on a rainy day and catching nothing, but coming back to the cabin a few days later for the fish fry anyway, with aunts and uncles, cousins, and a night bonfire and s’mores to boot. And there is something so heart-warming in having a delicious rhubarb-based desert for the 8th time this week! (WHY is rhubarb so tasty??)<br />But when one can’t go take a loved one out to enjoy the Minnesotan outdoors, what then? Every time I visit home I am reminded of the tragedy of aging, a seemingly non-applicable specter in my life in the subtropical highlands, because everyone I know here has only aged two years, so they’re mostly the same as when I met them. And everyone I know back home gets older without me realizing it. In some sense, my heart breaks after an entire month at home, because a major part of what I did is become appraised of just how different (and in many cases how much more difficult) everyone’s lives have become as compared to when I left. Grampa and I ended up not being able to go fishing because his general fragility interfered with his self-reliance. Will I ever get the chance to share an experience like that with him again, or will he not be around anymore? Living far from family is like being medicated by the drug of complacency into assuming the well-being of the loved ones back home continues as normal. It doesn’t always.<br />So I sit long hours with him, just chatting. Sometimes we go driving. There was a time when he could write me a 25-page letter in spite of his arthritis, to arrive like the best Christmas present EVER in my PO box in Guatemala, but years have passed and he can’t anymore. I long to go for a walk with him through the woods, where I ask anyone I love to come walk with me and just talk for a while about the world as they perceive it. But he can’t make the walk anymore either. He could tell me so much, but instead of the woods to draw the memories and the poetry out of him, it’s just me in the chair across the table from him to entice them out. I feel I am a poor substitute, but he seems to appreciate it nonetheless. I like to think there will be somebody in the chair across the table from me when I am old, to entice the memories and poetry out of me too, when I’m no longer able to go seek refuge in the woods.<br />I felt so emotionally useful back home, as though people really needed me. It is this that makes taking up the yoke once more here in Totonicapán all the more difficult, because I’ve never felt as needed here. I’m not, to be frank. The work I was so excited to get started on with Rainforest Alliance to the benefit of the 48 Cantones of Totonicapán Communal Mayors’ Association, has only been confusion and poor communication, and I feel like the one-person-too-many in the assembly line. Some people in my town are surprised to see me now that I’m back, so I sense I wasn’t missed nor did people maintain hope in the gringa fulfilling what she said about returning to finish the job. They don’t need me. <br />But in my last post I wrote about what Peace Corps means, and Peace Corps does <span style="font-style:italic;"></span>not<span style="font-style:italic;"></span> have to mean making oneself irreplaceable and necessary to the people with whom one lives. That would undermine the whole point of a two-year commitment… they’re not <span style="font-style:italic;"></span>supposed<span style="font-style:italic;"></span> to need me forever! And as far as being emotionally useful goes, I think I am still that. There were enough people who called me the night I got back, or whom I called and whose reactions to the call were of such joy, that I did actually feel pretty loved. I've already had two welcome-back dinners, was invited on a hike today, to a birthday party and two meetings this weekend, to go stay the night at two different homes, and to a parade next week. And I’ve only been home for two days! Just goes to show, we can cultivate loving relationships no matter where we are in the world. Even if it’s not Minnesota.<br />And I wonder how many of my Guatemalan loved ones were saying, “se fue de vacaciones” when asked about me, and whether they felt any of the uncertainty that normally accompanies the phrase, regarding my eventual return. Did anyone worry I wouldn’t come back? I wonder if any of my colleagues missed me…Did anyone need me for a work-related question, to weigh in on an issue, to provide my input, to write up a quick report of some kind, but instead met that frustratingly ambiguous and unchangeable response? It sure is nice to go on vacation, but it’s funny how we as human beings want to be missed too – we feel as though we have some right to be missed if we’ve worked hard at something. But in the end, let’s throw in a dash of humility and reality: who cares if Rainforest Alliance and 48 Cantones don’t miss me, if host families and Guatemalan friends don’t end up missing me much? Actually, I should hope they’re just fine without me. I like the people back home in Minnesota best anyway, so if there’s anyone I hope misses me a little bit… I think they already know. Yeah, you. Miss you, too. Can we go for a walk in the woods next time we see each other?Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-11176574995231446372011-02-23T18:24:00.004-06:002012-08-14T23:29:07.190-06:00New Endeavors18 april 2011<br /><br />Peace Corps is not always what you think it is.<br />In fact, I’ve decided it’s NEVER what you think it is. What a paradox! I thought I was coming to a developing country for 2 long years to live in a village, train some people in a probably behind-the-curve host agency, inspire some community empowerment, develop my own technical skills, and make some positive impressions and some friendships, hopefully ones that last a while. You know, like, a lifetime.<br />And I find myself after two incredibly short years, still here! Having lived for a while in a village, then an “urban center” (Toto is its provincial capitol, but seems smaller than the small town I went to grade-school in), having trained in some coworkers, some teachers, and lots and lots of kids, having made many friendships so profound I find it hard to imagine life without them, and having worked in an actually very professional host association and now working for a global U.S.-based one, I am STILL learning that Peace Corps has never really been what I thought it would turn out to be.<br />So I’m staying, in part, to find out what it actually is – to fully discover what it can mean to be a Peace Corps Volunteer. As one fellow Guatemala PCV put it, we are fully subsidized do-gooders! Are we effective as such? A common perception is that Peace Corps volunteers go out to save the world. Debatable. Unlike USAID, and a host of other development agencies, try as it might Peace Corps does not have benchmarks, does not have clear black-and-white indicators, cannot easily chart its progress, impact, and dollar amounts thrown at development over its 48 years here in Guatemala. Does that mean I won’t be able to prove my success or impact upon Completion of Service? Probably. At least I won’t be able to point to very many tangible development benchmarks. <br />Another common perception of what Peace Corps implies, does serving for Peace Corps mean I live in poverty? Close… but not compared to my neighbors, really. It has been a means to convince people I’m in for the long haul, because I committed to live at their standard of living (and didn’t move to Xela, the big touristy city, despite being given the green light to!). I think I’ve gained trust and local confidence, and the idea is to find grassroots ways to empower people and open their minds and opportunities toward our communities’ development. <br />Does being a Peace Corps Volunteer mean I train people? I have a lot to add, but I’m still learning from the people I meet here, far more than I feel like I’ve been able to teach anyone.<br />For instance, last week I worked as a translator for a Kenyan man who works for CARE, another international development agency. He globetrots to wherever CARE is working to do diagnostics and implementation plans of potential community forest-conservation projects, the idea being to set up a carbon credits sale or other form of Payment for Environmental Services (PES). (For those unfamiliar with the idea, it’s like setting up a financial incentive based on a forest’s environmental services like soil conservation, oxygen production, water conservation, biodiversity protection, etc. Somebody somewhere else pays the locals for these things to be conserved, to offset the immediate payoff for the timber, the firewood, and the land to cultivate.) This Kenyan has helped diagnose carbon capture and storage of forests of all sizes all over the world, and has designed and implemented many pioneer projects finally involving communities (instead of only privately owned land) in the carbon and PES markets. So what did I learn from him? We went tromping around in the forests with the local forestry technicians, and I learned how he does his diagnostics – how many trees in how many meters radius around point n, how many centimeters diameter-at-breast-height, how tall the tree, what kind of undergrowth and forest litter, what slope of the ground, and how to integrate all that into the calculations of carbon sequestration – and how he does NOT want it done (thanks to the young Guatemalan high-school grads who were our technicians whose measurement techniques were bad according to the Kenyan, and whose GPS points were wrong and led us wandering out of the municipal forest we should have been in, and caused us to walk around lost the rest of the afternoon before finally finding a road at 6pm). He told me about his environmental consultancy work and how he considers it to be the most exciting work out there. I learned from him what being a forestry consultant means, especially these days with carbon capture and climate change being such pressing issues. I learned through careful question-by-question scrutiny (and translation…my job!) how he designs surveys to carefully measure communities’ use of forest resources, and establishes baseline indicators of standard of living, income sources, sanitation, and education. I picked his brain about how community trust funds can be established in communities without on-paper ownerships of forests but de facto ownership and administration of them, as is the case in Totonicapán. And he gave me hope that communities in his experience are willing participants in economic-environmental systems that benefit them if they can trust it and have power to make decisions about it. <br />And as I write this, my new host agency Rainforest Alliance is sending me to the tropical jungles of the Petén province to see their community projects there and, most importantly, to discuss with their Petén personnel what processes and materials we can also apply to climate change education/environmental education with community groups in Totonicapán (and which ones we simply can’t, for cultural and environmental reasons!). I expect to mostly learn on this trip, but I can’t help but feel like the pressure is high. This is the first time I’m being employed because somebody thinks I’m valuable. With this privilege comes responsibility, and we haven’t really defined yet what they’re going to be expecting from me based on the information I’m going to see and report on and/or give my feedback on. But what could be better than be sent to learn, about how people learn, and then go implement that by teaching people, and end up learning more oneself? <br />So I go, not knowing exactly how all these different experiences will weave together into something coherent and well-thought-out, but I’ve decided that the point for now is to be a sponge – soak up as much information as possible, somewhat indiscriminately because one never knows when some detail may become of supreme importance. So many times in my life I’ve played the role of “sponge,” it seems! Because for now, I don’t have benchmarks, I don’t have to chart my progress, and I don’t have to prove my completion of indicators. All that will come as, I hope, the project objectives, timeline, budget, and all other details become clear. I sense that this project for which I am staying an extra year in Guatemala may actually have the tangible impacts in the end that I maybe regretted not seeing in my work in El Aprisco for the past two years. But then again, I’m still learning what Peace Corps means, what my service has meant to me and to others, and what another year might mean to my community members. Another year in poverty, here I come!!! I imagine some of you reading this were once Peace Corps volunteers yourselves… One day, I want you to tell me what Peace Corps means. I probably still won’t have it figured out by then. :)Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-63752305330483283862011-02-20T11:57:00.008-06:002011-02-25T18:27:56.095-06:00Integration... the long haulFive months have passed since my last blog post, and of course the temptation to use a blog as a journal is powerful... <br />But the description of changes in temperature and weather, the litany of events this entire fall and winter season, and in particular the itinerary of the Roske family Christmas visit, would simply bore and drive off anyone actually reading this :)<br /><br />So instead I want to focus on the fact that technically my time here in Guatemala should be ending with the month of March of this year. My training group of January 2009 has its Close of Service date set for March 26th, 2011. This doesn't mean everybody is forced to go home that day; Peace Corps, if you haven't noticed, is kinda into the whole lack of definition on certain points, so some people have already gone home, some people will leave between now and that day of such significance at the end of March, and some will find themselves hanging onto life here and in their hesitation taking a few more days or weeks to really finish everything up and head home.<br /><br />And then there are those of us thinking about taking a few extra <em></em>months<em></em> to feel "finished up" with Guatemala - twelve months, to be precise. I didn't think it would happen this way. To be honest, I took from my last visit home in July a strong need to be home and partake in life in Minnesota for a while, 8 months or so from then. And here we are, seven of those months down, and I frankly feel some days like I make a better <em></em>guatemalteca<em></em> than I do American. Where did that resolve to go home to Minnesota, go?<br />Well it's not that i just got scared of readjustment, because frankly the call home is still quite hard to ignore, and I’d happily go home to family and friends in a heartbeat. The problem is, a pretty exciting work prospect came up, and seemed like it might make more sense than going home to a lackluster work economy... go home to start looking for a job like this, or stay here for it and save everyone a few plane tickets?<br /><br />If all goes well, I could be working with a non-governmental organization that works towards environmental sustainability and fair trade practices in countries all over the world. I’d be working for forest conservation, and my daily activities could pertain to some or all of the following: environmental education (with school groups, with community groups, maybe with other industry players like carpenters, etc.), corporate environmental responsibility (marketing and promotion to businesses to reduce their carbon footprint through carbon credits), reforestation (tree nurseries, trainings on proper tree planting, seed collection, etc.), and probably a range of other activities. This environmental NGO is becoming somewhat well-known (ahem, for an environmental NGO…) around the world… maybe you’ve heard of Rainforest Alliance? <br /><br />If that name’s not ringing a bell, start looking for the little green frog symbol on coffee, on chocolates, etc. That symbol means the production of that good met rather strict organic and fair-trade standards, and its rising popularity and demand is the only way those standards can have a real impact on the global market for those goods that are historically exploitative both in terms of ecology and in terms of labor. What happens when businesses ask for Rainforest Alliance certified products? In the global market, they begin to outcompete products that didn’t take environmental and human rights concerns into account. This is good, right?<br /><br />But no one can touch topics like this in Totonicapán if they’re seen as a foreign, external influence on a proud, historic, and effectual indigenous community structure. This is the one thing I have… people here know me! They know I came to work in El Aprisco teaching their kids, or they’ve seen me around the 48 Cantones (Indigenous Mayors’ Assembly) events or meetings and know I have good intentions. I love this town… I hope that a regional stint with Rainforest Alliance doesn’t keep me from this pueblo and all the wonderful people in it… Mom, Dad, and siblings know, they met an inordinate amount of those individuals who have made life great for me here.<br /><br />So I guess I'm one of those crazy ones that has integrated too much. "Integration"... a classic Peace Corps word that has come to take on whole new meanings to me in my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Integration is I guess what happens when a volunteer develops such an identity and a sense of community in their town (or "site", in Peace Corps terminology) that they don't want to leave when their two years of service are up. Integration is I guess donning <br /><em></em>traje<em></em> for special occasions (first, letting the women dress you... then, real integration is knowing how to put it on yourself, and what it means to put it on wrong, haha). Integration is people inviting you to birthday parties, weddings, baptisms, anniversaries, etc. Integration is not complaining when you have <em></em>pan dulce<em></em> with café (monotonous sweet bread rolls with sugared-down instant coffee-water) for the seventh night this week. Integration is the ambulatory cheese seller seeking you out, signifying of course that you have now become another steady buyer in his market. Integration is greeting young boys in town you know with their nickname and the secret handshake. Integration is the pick-up drivers who head out of town towards your work knowing you well enough to ask <em></em>you<em></em> if you want a ride when they drive by, instead of vice versa. Integration is not really knowing the nearby big city full of gringos very well, because that's not where nor with whom you spend your free time. In short, integration is having gotten so used to a lifestyle...<br /><br />...that maybe the one you had before gets a little forgotten.Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-66390969289892454042010-09-21T11:32:00.000-06:002010-09-21T11:33:09.086-06:00Rain, Rain, go away… but not completely, please…Well it’s official: it's an excessively wet year. If it's not drought and famine like it was this time last year (the growing i.e. wet season), it's so much rain from so many hurricanes and tropical storms that landslides are everywhere, people lose crops as well as houses (and in some cases their lives) to flooded rivers and sliding mud (and the occasional infernal abyss opening in the middle of the capital city, check the news online someplace for photos!), the Interamerican highway gets completely blocked by landslides or totally washed/caved out at several locations... First it was Agatha, then it was Alex, and then I stopped keeping track of what they’re called. It's ridiculous, and it’s just in time for Totonicapán’s Feria! Haha.<br /><br />Feria should be good this year, seeing as they finally finished construction “remodeling” the Central Park with a covered stage, etc. etc. for all the bands that are scheduled for, well, every day 2-10 pm since last week till the 30th of September. And now I live in town, so I get to participate in all the fun quite a bit more than I did last year! (I also get the consequences, like constantly hearing said bands from said park till late in the evening, dealing with increased traffic, and increased numbers of drunks walking the streets… but it’s a trade-off that doesn’t bother me much.) So the city center will soon be incapacitated to traffic by hundreds of covered vendors’ shops, half of whom all will be selling roscas (look like circular pretzals but are sweetish and crunchy) and the other half, bricks of coconut candy dyed various colors. I’m not kidding you, this is the kind of marketing genius you find here… if it works for one person, it’s got to work for two hundred more, right? <br /><br />The new place is good for me. I live with a middle-aged indigenous Señora, and while there are a surprising number of disadvantages I didn't realize I had so good up in the "provincial" village (like hot water, a shower, a sink in the kitchen and in the bathroom, a flushing toilet), frankly I stress out less over most everything else: food, internet, what time I get done with work in town, skyping my folks, etc. Because it matters less now. If I need something now, I just walk 3 blocks to the market and buy it, or if it's nighttime I find a close-by tienda. Same with internet. None of this having to finish everything and be waiting on the right street corner by 6 pm for a pickup driver to pass who happens to be going past the village. What a spoiled Peace Corps Volunteer I’ve turned out to be! This all comes from the reality I faced when I came here, of working in a park way up in a little village, but needing access to the town where the association's office is, where food and internet and all other personal and work-related amenities are... I had to choose to live in one, and commute to and from the other. I tried it Collegeville-style for my first year and a half, living in the boonies and just trying to take advantage of time in town to do everything that needed to be done. But in the end, the complications of that approach got the better of me. So now I do the opposite: I live in town and commute to the park! Six months prior to my Close of Service date, it seems like an odd move and at an odd time.<br /><br />But I realize I’m much happier now. I suppose one has to realize when a situation has potential to get better, and when it just won’t – which turns out to have been the case living up in the village. And I like this new little old lady (who, confusingly enough is also named Emiliana, but to differentiate I always refer to her as Doña Emiliana). She's all about sharing - time, food, knowledge, family, conversations - but is good about giving and wanting personal time too. She's particular in a good way, in that she pays attention to details in a respectful manner and will never borrow things without being really good about giving it back in good condition. She likes to give high-fives, which I found amusing when I first came. She has a daughter slightly older than me who comes to stay once a week with the new baby grandson, and we all get along swimmingly; this also means she's used to my age group and we can talk, which I haven't often found with older indigenous women here (the cultural divide and age and language barriers seem to get in the way). She likes to travel, and we've already done some of that together, always planning more. The heart of the matter is that I'm learning so much from her, and hope to continue to, and she gets all excited about learning and trying new things from me. This is so great – this is why I did Peace Corps, I guess.<br />And my relationship with my old host family is wonderful now. Since I'm not living there anymore, all tension and awkwardness is gone. I've visited to stay overnight a couple times and we've had so much fun! I really, really like that family and think moving was a good way to save a strong friendship.<br /><br />In August I finally went to visit Jennifer my good friend from college in her Peace Corps site in Honduras, quick before her Close of Service this month of September, and together we did a lot of reflecting on time passing and our experiences or chapters of life coming to a close. What will characterize our memories of being a Peace Corps Volunteer? How will our lives have changed course? A window on her life as a PCV, my visit showed just how entirely different her experience has been from mine, and I found myself wondering if that means I’m doing it wrong, or if there is a better or best way of serving as a PCV. I think probably there isn’t, but the point is to keep analyzing that, and to keep implementing the changes that might be needed to make things better. I’m glad I implemented the change of the move, scary and potentially disastrous as it seemed to my work relationships, personal relationships, and credibility in the village. But nobody’s mad at me for leaving the village! I’m still there almost every day, albeit in the park. I was worried about nothing at all, I guess. Jennifer’s good at making me see that.<br /><br />So looking back at these changes and circumstances, as Feria approaches along with the worst of the rainy season, it’s a mixed bag. There’s lots to be happy about, lots to be worried about, and lots to be excited about. The people pray for blessings this season of celebration and harvest, while in the same breath pray to be kept safe from the damage and danger of the extreme weather. I pray for the same, as well as for inspiration with my work in El Aprisco seeing as I only have 6 months left to get anything done; for the grace to continue strengthening relationships with friends and “loved ones” here; and for guidance in what I will do and where I will be when those 6 months come to a close. (Anyone got any suggestions?? I have an uncle who says Medical school… hm, sounds like a very new direction and a little intimidating… ) Keep well! and hope you’re keeping warmer and dryer than we are here.Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-39860914373044276342010-09-21T11:26:00.001-06:002010-09-21T11:28:00.708-06:00Get to know your public servants month (Note: this is from April-May 2010)Once in a while some unlikely situation presents itself, leading to a string of unlikely and heretofore unimagined opportunities. It’s sometimes called serendipity, and this day in late April was not the first day its whimsical influence.<br />Having traveled to the Guatemala City area for my Peace Corps Mid-Service Conference (another one of those volunteer reunions of my cohort group, particularly significant for its marking of my halfway point), I was suddenly bombarded that fateful Friday by my Peace Corps superiors asking if I planned to be back in Totonicapán the next day, Saturday. I wasn’t; I was staying near the capital for the weekend because I had scheduled a routine but obligatory medical appointment for Monday in the city, there having been no other openings. But I said, “I can be…?” My PC project director and boss Flavio explained that the U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala was traveling to Totonicapán the next day for a big meeting with the Alcaldía Indígena de 48 Cantones, the Indigenous Mayors’ Association with which I sometimes work on forestry, trash management and environmental education projects. I am the only North American who works with them, and if there were anyone who could help orient the Ambassador to the nuanced realities of this powerful form of local grass-roots government it would probably be me… So I jumped at the news! Of course I can be there! Hmm… even if it means forgoing plans to go to the beach with friends on Saturday, haha.<br />And since it doesn’t hurt to enquire, I asked if the Ambassador was leaving from his home in the capital tomorrow morning, to possibly catch a ride with the convoy/entourage since otherwise I’d just be sharing the highway with them from a chicken bus! Of course, I didn’t know if that sort of thing was allowed, regular folks traveling with the Ambassador… But there I was, responding to my strict orders to arrive at 7:30 am at the “Residence” for a quick breakfast and we were on our way.<br />A few hours later (and considerably later than the hour at which we were supposed to arrive at the Assembly of the Indigenous Mayors in Toto), the two-SUV convoy stopped in the crowded streets around Toto’s Central Park, it being market day and the place totally crammed with people, and I climbed down from one of those SUVs with the U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala. Fancy that. The big cars and the four or five bodyguards sure attracted attention, and as we walked escorted by the President of 48 Cantones and other board members who had arrived to greet us I was soon hearing “Seño! Seño!” from kids I know who recognized me (that’s a shortened “señorita” and is how all young women and female teachers are referred to in this country). I sure felt important, and like I didn’t really deserve it! <br />That feeling didn’t change when we climbed the stairs and were ushered into the Assembly. I was whisked to the front with the rest of the Ambassador’s party, and reflected that this wouldn’t have happened had I not by coincidence been in Guatemala City and asked for a ride; I would’ve been just another member of support staff present that afternoon when the embassy entourage showed up. Hence, serendipity.<br />The Ambassadorial visit was for the dignitary to get to know this organization, and also to sound out whether any potential for Embassy financial support existed. The Board of Directors did much speech-making on the history, structure, and function of 48 Cantones, after which the Ambassador gave his address in k’iche’ (wild enthusiasm from the assembly, of course), after which the President of 48 Cantones presented and briefly detailed his grant proposal. Of course, all this to ask for money!<br />In the car on the way back to Guatemala City (ah yes, when he found out I had to be back in Guate the Ambassador offered me a ride back too! What a good guy) it was just the Ambassador and I, and he reflected quite a bit on the practicality of the proposal with which he had been presented that day. An exorbitant amount of money to build a building! And for what? “I’d never get this through; I’d be laughed out first!” If only there were a way we could help them out with the tree nursery and reforestation efforts they talked about… If only we could encourage the community environmental education stuff they said they do… And I agreed.<br />In all, it was a car ride of stimulating conversation and some good ideas and reflections; the Ambassador left me his card with emails and everything, and as the SUV convoy drove me up to the front door of where I was staying and dropped me off I remember thinking… What just happened? Did all that really just happen? <br />And while that day was soon over the issue of the funding grant was not, and my part to play in this was just beginning really. I soon found out from my friends on the Natural Resources Board of 48 Cantones that another grant proposal did in fact exist, one that included aid on tree nursery upkeep and reforestation, as well as on community education campaigns. Just the thing the Ambassador had expressed wanting to see more of! So I emailed him a copy of the alternate proposal that, because of politics between boards and board members of 48 Cantones, wasn’t presented to him that Saturday but had all the elements he expressed wanting to see. Of course he was interested, and these days we are in negotiations on how to make a grant fit this proposal. I sure hope I see something come of this before I go. If anyone deserves USAID money, it’s the Natural Resource Board of the 48 Cantones whose members dedicate themselves every year to preserving the 21,000-hectare coniferous forest surrounding the pueblo; the natural and cultural legacy that has been “passed down” for generations but which nowadays is being slowly degraded, thinned, and shrunken for lack of environmental ethic and awareness. I sense I am already invested in this potential project because my park, El Aprisco, has played a big part in instilling that lost environmental ethic in the newest generation. But just one effort isn’t enough. We’ll see what USAID says on the matter!Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-2455625880664530802010-08-05T15:25:00.003-06:002010-08-05T15:54:26.693-06:00More changes are on the way as the rainy season takes full force here in the altiplano of Guatemala. After a wonderful visit home to Minnesota I returned to the the land of mountains and brilliant weavings a little more homesick than before and with a big decision to make... where to move. As in, I had decided that for various reasons (most work or transport-related, some space and tact-related) it would be better to find a place to live down in the actual town of Totonicapán instead of in my little aldea up the mountain. Seems abrupt, I know... but as of March I had made up my mind and had also received the suggestion from my Peace Corps higher-ups, that I look for a place to live in the pueblo.<br />Let me pull out a favorite Minnesotan expression here: Uffda! Looking for a place in Toto is NOT easy, and everything is way more expensive than it really should be... land, house, and rent values are higher in Toto than they are in the much bigger and more cosmopolitan Xela, some attributing this fact to Toto's riduculous population density and land demand, and others to the high percentage of Toto youth being in or having been in the states for years making bank and therefore being able to pay those exorbitant prices. <br />Point is, I searched and I searched, and it took me until just before my trip home to find something I liked, with someone I liked, at a price I liked. Confusingly enough the proprietor's name is Doña Emiliana (just like my previous host-mom). She is a sweet little old lady who now lives by herself most of the time when her married daughter isn't visiting, occupies herself with beautiful embroidery and seamstress work on huipiles and cortes, has a few missing teeth which show with how much she smiles, and jumped at the chance to rent me the room for half the price everyone else was offering me. <br />Informing my neighbors in the village wasn't easy... mostly I just didn't do it. I told the people who would notice and be a little miffed not having been told, but as I don't live on the main drag in the aldea most people just see me coming to or going from work in the park, which won't change at all. The conversation was had with Arnulfo and Emiliana, my previous host-parents, long ago when I was in the searching phase. But telling my host-siblings was something I put off and put off, not wanting to have them feeling sad or guilty about it. Tonight for my last evening there we will FINALLY make lasagna together, something we've been talking about since I arrived a year and four months ago. Hard to believe that so much time has passed with this family! Their company, guidance, companionship, humor, and acceptance will always be the framework of my memories of Guatemala. <br />But sometimes change is good. I'm excited to jump in a little more to some aspects of my work without the logistical inhibitions of transport, lack of internet, lack of presence at the office, etc. There's a new compañero at work too, who it turns out will almost be my neighbor, as his house is closeby where I move in tomorrow - he drives, and has been driving the El Aprisco vehicle with my boss Vicky these last few weeks, so someone to share rides with!! No more pickups in the rain! Sometimes I wonder if the inconveniences were really that big a deal. After all this is Peace Corps. But being so close to a big down with connections and resources that could make me a more effective Peace Corps Volunteer, and just preferring to make excuses out of the reluctance to move and start over someplace new, seemed like a poor excuse. Life requires a little courage sometimes, you know?Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-48778814496330583922010-04-07T15:11:00.007-06:002010-05-22T11:08:54.738-06:00Speaking of EasterIt all started with an invite to the beach. Having never been to Guatemala's coast yet, except sticking one toe in on the eastern coast in Puerto Barrios, which is a port and not beach, I was keen to accept this year's Semana Santa (Holy Week) invitation. Guatemala is famous for beaches! What was I waiting for, right? Only one year left here to see all that I haven't seen yet...<br />So I asked my boss Vicky's permission to go with Luis and his family to spend five days at Monterrico - beaches of black sand and hot, muggy weather - provided I'd be back in El Aprisco for the busiest, craziest days of Semana Santa when the park has the highest number of visitors of the entire year: Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. Those are hard days to handle in the park for the ridiculous number of Guatemalans who arrive wanting to picnic or barbeque with their families, play soccer, whatever - and when all the El Aprisco staff also wants to be on holiday! My presence there was going to help out the solitary park guard quite a lot.<br />We left for Monterrico on a Friday morning. And we proceeded to spend the next five days enjoying the sun and the water, and for me it was wonderful to take a break from both El Aprisco and Peace Corps responsibilities. And I managed to not sunburn myself! (mostly)<br />On Wednesday morning of Holy Week Luis and family piled into two SUVs for the drive out to Xela to visit his dad's side of the family for the holiday. Midday there was a cutthroat soccer game planned to settle the annual rivalry between the Guatemala City cousins and the Xela cousins, and Uncle Alejandro who was driving out with us kept insisting that I should be put in as goalie. See, we had scrimmaged a few times in the backyard with him and the rest of the male contingent of the family, and he seemed impressed, or feigned compliments anyway, about my goaltending skills. So while I had planned for the convoy of SUVs that Wednesday to just drop me off where the road to Totonicapán leads off the interamerican highway so I would get back to Toto that Wednesday, I ended up being hauled to Xela and playing in said heated soccer game (we lost - 20 to 16, but I maintain I was a waaaay better goalie than the other team's - it's that their forwards and midfielders played much better than my team's because they play together on a weekly basis, and a much higher rate of shots on goal means they're bound to get more past me!). But that wasn't all: afterward the whole family convoy, therefore including me, headed to grandma and grandpa's house in a small town on the opposite end of the state of Toto called San Vicente Buenabaj, where his dad and eight siblings grew up.<br />I was improvising all of this; I had not planned on this part of Semana Santa activities, but was excited to visit Luis's extended family at their home, with aunts, uncles and cousins I had maybe met at family events once or twice. Luis convinced me it wouldn't be that big a deal to hop a bus back out of town early the next morning if I really felt I needed to get back to El Aprisco that urgently!<br />And it would have been a good idea, hanging out with Luis's family for a bit and heading out of San Vicente as early as I wanted Thursday morning... had the buses been running. Haha!<br />But lemons turned themselves into lemonade, and had the buses been running I wouldn't have partaken in the family hike and picnic, soccer games and tug-of-war tournament, the town women's league soccer game they loaned me a jersey for:<br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/S_gL9q2lhrI/AAAAAAAAAOQ/YoJ6UEfUfAI/s1600/IMG_6342a.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/S_gL9q2lhrI/AAAAAAAAAOQ/YoJ6UEfUfAI/s320/IMG_6342a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474138501172004530" /></a>and the making of "alfombras" the morning of Good Friday:<br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/S_gL-agI32I/AAAAAAAAAOg/YdjBQEb-4cI/s1600/IMG_6355.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/S_gL-agI32I/AAAAAAAAAOg/YdjBQEb-4cI/s320/IMG_6355.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474138513962753890" /></a><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/S_gL-Gw1fJI/AAAAAAAAAOY/45yc4t8fQrg/s1600/IMG_6354.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/S_gL-Gw1fJI/AAAAAAAAAOY/45yc4t8fQrg/s320/IMG_6354.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474138508664077458" /></a><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/S_gL9ZCAiBI/AAAAAAAAAOI/Uuf2hIKWMnI/s1600/IMG_6353.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/S_gL9ZCAiBI/AAAAAAAAAOI/Uuf2hIKWMnI/s320/IMG_6353.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474138496388073490" /></a><br />(a word for rug, this is the Guatemalan tradition with colored sawdust much like Tibetan sand art. Every Lent and especially Holy Week there are periodic processions, and beautiful designs are made in colored sawdust in the streets beforehand, the point being that the processioners walk over the alfombras and usually they are destroyed). Here everyone out helping:<br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/S_gOED_V6-I/AAAAAAAAAOo/2W_9mEAiR3M/s1600/IMG_6351.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/S_gOED_V6-I/AAAAAAAAAOo/2W_9mEAiR3M/s320/IMG_6351.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474140810022087650" /></a><br />A cool mayan calendar symbol Luis's cousin made, and later when the procession's coming a photo of all the cousins sitting on the stoop waiting for its arrival:<br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/S_gOEhgeRzI/AAAAAAAAAOw/-qyOIG5gFl0/s1600/IMG_6361.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/S_gOEhgeRzI/AAAAAAAAAOw/-qyOIG5gFl0/s320/IMG_6361.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474140817945675570" /></a><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/S_gOE5p_9zI/AAAAAAAAAO4/565hRXSmxTk/s1600/IMG_6367.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/S_gOE5p_9zI/AAAAAAAAAO4/565hRXSmxTk/s320/IMG_6367.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474140824428082994" /></a><br />And Friday morning Luis and family brought me back and delivered me all the way to El Aprisco - it was actually Luis's first time seeing the park! - before they headed back home to the capital. And while I arrived a little later than I had hoped, Don Bonifacio seemed to be doing fine holding the fort on his own, and I arrived before the worst of the craziness that Friday. Saturday, well that was a different story... we got a little stressed out by the over 400 visitors that day (in a 13-hectare park most of which is forest! where do they all go??) :) But I guess not everyone chooses to go check out the black-sand beaches on the coast - everybody has their preferences, and now I know mine: I prefer my little forested, mountainous, endemic-bird-ridden corner of the world, and the good news is that other people prefer it too. And keep coming. I hope that much, at least, continues to hold true.Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-36644248479772721072010-03-21T12:43:00.009-06:002010-04-20T18:20:33.414-06:00The New Year's news on El Sendero Ecológico El Aprisco!It's been a few months, and recounting events and reflections thereof may prove daunting, both for me to write and for you to read! But it's been a good winter; the long cold is over, and it's almost back to the (slightly) warmer rainy season.<br />This winter (which is called summer here, simply because it doesn't rain. Guatemala is still in the northern hemisphere, so technically winter and summer occur at the same time as ours do. People here just use different criteria to label their seasons, haha) has been busy. It has also brought big changes in the park! Last December we received the news that neither the park director nor my counterpart (the education coordinator) would be continuing with us in 2010. My initial reaction was a mixture of relief (they were both rather ineffective at their jobs and seemed to be holding the park back) and alarm (their departure was to leave me with the other trail guide and the two park guards - me, running El Aprisco with no budget and almost no staff??? The last time the park lost a director it took over 3 months to find a replacement!). But I didn't have long to fear. Our parent association took swift action and hired an incredibly competent person who was until this promotion already among the association's administrative team, and who a few years ago had done undergrad thesis work in the park getting a degree in pedagogy. And did I mention she's a woman???<br />I met Vicky when Kate, the former volunteer, was still here and introduced us. Since then, it always felt comfortable dropping in on Vicky in her office to talk about El Aprisco, our projects there, ideas, failures, frustrations, dreams... she was a source of both inspiration and counsel. Now, she is my new boss.<br />Having a year under my belt in El Aprisco, Vicky looks to me for judgment calls, new ideas, and technical information on potential projects. She has earned my profound admiration for taking on the challenge of a park left in severe budget deficit thanks to the former director's incompetence and lack of consideration for the park's future once he decided he was quitting. She has taken that reality and transformed it, having already earned us two major grants and going for a third, all in this year's first trimester. This is big news for a little nature preserve dedicated to environmental education - not exactly a lucrative sector of the economy, you might say.<br />But our environmental education component is not the only one we're trying to grow this year. Our other major attraction can be seen flittering among the pine trees all hours of the day, and makes us a major destination for international visitors with a certain agenda in mind: birders. One of (if not THE) only natural preserve areas open to the public in the highland coniferous forest of Totonicapán, El Aprisco is home to a surprising biodiversity of highland bird species - around 95-100 different species, and about 30 of them endemic, meaning worldwide they are only found in these highland parts of Guatemala. On a birding experience while visiting Uncle Den in Mexico for New Year's I realized what a lucrative operation the excursion seemed to be catering to birders out to see the coastal bird species, and that there should also be interest in and demand for the birds you only find in the mountains! El Aprisco is perfect for birders who want the other side of the coin to the low-altitude tropical-forest species, and it seems that somehow other foreigners have suddenly come to the same conclusion: our birding program has experienced surprising growth in these last 3 months, having received about six groups of international visitors coming solely to see the birds in our forests. Better yet, we've created some community involvement and income generation from this new development, through the hiring of local youth guides from a neighboring family-owned parcel of forest to take our visitors deep into their (considerably larger and more habitat-diverse) forest in order to see a wider variety of highland bird species. It's rewarding watching these young people renewing their interest in their grandparents' knowledge of and intimacy with the forest and its avian inhabitants. This project has become one of generating income, developing youth leadership, and relearning cultural value of the environment. Such exciting stuff!!<br />To those who have not one iota of interest in birds, this probably all sounds like some mania that makes no sense. And I must admit I didn't used to get excited about birds. But these days on my walks through the forest to arrive at the El Aprisco front gate in the morning, I no longer just hear nature background noise. I hear instead the individual and distinct voices of the birds like they were my familiar neighbors, little personalities I can identify calling to me from up ahead eleven-o'clock according to the face of the clock, from two-o'clock understory level, from seven-o'clock but really distant... like characters in a story. Walks through the El Aprisco forest with school groups are enriched when I can stop in my tracks, tell the kids to listen hard, and act like it's a REALLY big deal what we're listening for... and then watch them get excited about birds when they learn even a little bit about them. <br />In the end, though, my Peace Corps service is not really about getting kids to learn bird species. Teaching them this stuff is about the excitement they start feeling for being in the woods and knowing something about it. It's about the realizations they come to about the way changes in their society and culture are using up and harming something so beautiful, and that it doesn't have to be that way. It's about showing the youth group members that young people CAN earn more of an income from protecting and sustainably using the environment - being a wilderness guide - than from overexploiting it extracting unbelievable amounts of illegally harvested wood, which is the career path many young people feel is the only one available to them in Toto. Wish me luck. And much luck and blessings to you too as we enter the Easter season. Happy Easter, till next time!Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-36982475841585168252010-01-20T17:25:00.000-06:002010-01-20T17:26:50.159-06:00Es La TemporadaSomehow the translation of “Tis the Season” just doesn’t have the same ring to it in Spanish. No wonder it’s never caught on big here. That catchphrase notwithstanding, there’s actually plenty of common ground in the ways North Americans and Guatemalans celebrate the holiday season. But naturally, I spent this Christmas and New Year’s learning more about the differences: missing traditions from home, learning new Guatemalan traditions, and sharing those things that matter to me most from home with my “family” and friends here. Christmas is supposed to be more about the giving than the getting…but in this year’s cultural exchange of time-honored, close-held traditions, I think both sides felt their lives enriched. And maybe I ended up getting more after all.<br />My motivation to go to great lengths re-enacting many of those Roske Family traditions here in the Guatemalan context of course stemmed from my feeling their absence. With Thanksgiving long passed, I suffered from severe and unintentional Scrooge-ism: I was not at all in the “Christmas spirit”! Maybe that comes with age, that every year that spirit is ever more sluggish to arrive, but all of my normal triggers were missing this year. I missed the tree, I missed the cookies, I missed the SNOW! I missed the carols, I missed the movies that for whatever reason have been an integral part of every Christmas since childhood (you know the ones – The Grinch, Rudolph, Santa Bear, Sesame Street Christmas and the Muppets Christmas, etc.) So I hummed the carols to myself, plucked them out on my out-of-tune guitar, strung up Christmas lights in my room, poured my heart into making Christmas cards, and made cookies. Lord, did I make cookies! I suspect many Roske family friends reading this have been past recipients of these cookies, these ginger-molasses delicacies from an age-old recipe handed down from the Landwehr/Lodermeier side of the family, and well – you can judge for yourself whether you consider them anything that amazing. But I discovered this year that I am positively a seasonal addict. It is NOT Christmas, I tell you, till there are molasses cookies!<br />So I went over to another volunteer’s house in a nearby town and three of us (but mostly me) spent an entire afternoon/evening baking cookies in her toaster oven. (Which did not include the long and patience-trying process of frosting them all later, which I chose to do the night the power was destined to go out. Frosting cookies by candlelight isn’t actually that tricky when there are only 2 colors to work with since I only found one food dye! ha.) But there was something about those cookies and the whole love-filled process of their making that I absolutely needed to feel, that took me back all but physically to our kitchen in Minnesota at Christmastime. Rolling out the dough time after time that afternoon with the few Christmas carols we had on our MP3-players filling the air, I was almost home in Collegeville. The cookie-cutters I carefully (and painfully – bandaids!) made by cutting a big tin can into strips and bending them into shapes, were of course in loving memory of the favorite shapes we use every year at home. It all reminded me of watching my father in all his baking-frenzy glory whip out tray after tray, while my mother would inevitably be across the way decorating the gallant 14-foot tree in the living room with over two decades’ worth of commemorative ornaments, every single one with a story behind it and the vast majority the grade school glue-gun-special variety. I missed it all so much, for this is how we commemorate Christmas in Collegeville, how we measure the passage of a year – and the passage of the years. I tried to explain it; and I think Emiliana and Arnulfo understood. Even though they don’t put up a tree in the house at Christmas, they graciously accepted the woodcarved ornaments made by my grandfather that he and I strategically selected last August for me to bring for all the members of my host family. (I was a little worried at first, Grampa, considering they don’t do the tree thing or really any decorations; but the next morning I saw those ornaments hung up on all the doors in the house. :) And they of course LOVED that heaping pile of cookies I presented them. Admittedly, apart from those ornaments I didn’t stress to make commemorative ornaments or anything for all my other friends here… but I DID bring them cookies! No, the fate of those 150+ cookies we made that day was NOT to end up in my stomach. Rather I fulfilled the Roske family custom of decorating and delivering them like Santa Claus to all my friends and neighbors, always with explanation to this or that Doña of why my family does this every year, and how in a way my family back home in Minnesota was, like me, offering this gift in an act of friendship and gratitude. And in the end, the cookies weren’t really that important: explaining the tradition, and the fact that I had extended it to the people closest to me here, was what really mattered.<br />Now, one Guatemalan tradition for which I definitely needed some explanation was the Posadas. The word itself means inn or place to stay, but this reenactment of Mary and Joseph’s search for room in the inn was not clear to me at first. Why would we all leave the warmth of our houses at 7 pm every frigid night the entire week (9 days) before Christmas to walk from one designated house to another carrying candles in cellophane boxes mounted on poles? But once I saw how pretty those twinkling lights in their technicolored boxes looked bobbing on up the mountainsides in the dark, like a string of beads as the congregation threaded those well-worn footpaths toward the next house; once I began to learn the lyrics to their carols and share in the smiles on their faces when a familiar one was chosen; once I understood the miniature theatrical production that was done every time we arrived at that night’s assigned house reenacting the plea for hospice and the journey of the holy family, as a symbol of good will and Christmas spirit passing from one human heart to the next… I decided I’m rather fond of the Posadas and will be excited for them again next year.<br />In Latin American culture Christmas Eve, called Nochebuena (The Good Night), is really the big deal. All this buildup of cookies, ornaments, and posadas happened in my community; Nochebuena and Navidad itself I spent with Luis and his extended family in the capital, Guatemala City. It was so good to be around a family, at this family-focused time of year, especially for someone whose family up until this year has always managed to celebrate Christmas all together at home. But I had made up my mind long ago that I have had many and will likely have many more of those Christmases in Collegeville, and I’ve probably only got two years to experience Christmas in Guatemala. However, this was not the rural-host-community Christmas I think every Peace Corps Volunteer envisions for themselves. The urban Guatemala Christmas is rather different from the rural highlands version, or so I gathered. In the capital we had turkey with gravy and potatoes for Christmas Eve dinner, instead of the typical tamales or paches (seasoned ground corn- or rice-paste with chicken, bell pepper, and red sauce folded and steam-cooked in a banana leaf). At midnight, everybody gives hugs; but in the capital some of the guys either give hugs early or give ’em late because at precisely midnight there were fireworks set off from most every block in the city – we’re talking thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands?) of people over many square miles of city setting off a million fireworks. And with Luis’ house slightly up on the mountainsides around the city valley, we had a great view of all the starbursts looking so tiny so many miles away! I give Guatemalans credit now for knowing how to put on a pretty decent fireworks show (even if extremely dangerous and a monumental burn-up of everybody’s holiday cash!) And in Luis’ house they had a tree – a real, live, lights-n-ornaments, bona fide pine Christmas tree, and for some reason it helped me feel that finally there was some way in which I WAS home. Sadly, the only real contact I could have with folks back home this Christmas Eve was a choppy, slow connection when my parents skyped my Guatemalan cell phone. (Mom said it really helped to hear my voice and for everyone to be able to talk to me, all of them there around the tree opening the presents I had sent home. That it felt more like I was among them. Mostly I just got sad for NOT being there and frustrated that we couldn’t understand each other half the time.) So, once everyone else in Luis’ house had finally gone to bed, in the wee hours after the present opening, the Midnight hugs, fireworks, and ensuing cleanup, Luis and I just sat on the sofa together in the quiet dark lit only by the glow of the tree looking at it mostly in silence, just like I love to do Christmas Eves at home. I told him about our Christmas tree, our ornaments, our games of I-Spy and Find the Pickle. And recounting those stories and basking in the glow, I fell asleep.<br />* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * <br />Less than one week later I would find myself saying goodbye to Luis as he dropped me off at the Xela bus terminal, after we found the next chicken-bus to the border and he had made sure this bus with his girlfriend on it would INDEED be going all the way to the border, and at a timely hour. Once the bus got going, I noticed the trees change from pines to oaks to palms as I myself shed layers and began to sweat from the heat and humidity. I was headed to Mexico, to spend New Year’s and the week after at my uncle Den’s house. My parents were coming New Year’s Day too, meaning Den, Liz, my parents and I had a week of almost uninterrupted beach-town relaxation. Very different scene from the cold highlands of Guatemala.<br />It’s a long bus ride from Xela to Puerto Escondido, Mexico. Therefore, twenty-three hours after bidding Luis farewell (thanks in part to border crossings and long bus station waits), when Liz picked me up New Year’s Eve morning in the terminal, I had my doubts about my ability this year to really celebrate the holiday – you’re in Mexico! No parents! But keeping in mind that bus ride, let’s just say Molly’s “New Year’s in Mexico” story contained a lot more yawning and a lot less crazy partying that its title would suggest. Or maybe it’s because I’m Minnesotan and don’t know how to party in Mexico. All is know is, when my parents arrived the next day and the Mexico beach time really began, we all three looked like fish out of water!<br />But it was pretty special to have made it possible to be with real family for the holidays this year, at least a part. We made so many good memories – seven days of just me and my folks and Den and Liz (how often does THAT happen? or will ever happen again?)…and the beach, and sunsets with margaritas on the terrace of their house, and boogie boarding and waterfront shopping and good food and sunshine… Again, that doesn’t sound very Peace-Corps-ish to me either! I guess I can say I’m no stereotypical PCV. And while part of me wonders what it would have been like to spend Christmas and New Year’s in Toto, it’s nice knowing that even though these are family holidays when I suspected no one in Toto would miss me as I belong to no one’s family, I was indeed missed! I received and had to regretfully turn down so many last-minute warm-hearted invites to come join so-and-so for Nochebuena, c’mon the whole family will be there, you’ll love it! or New Year’s, come down to our house, you can stay over, we’ll have plenty of room and plenty of food, the fam will be so happy to see you! I hope to take them up on the rain check for next year, and in the meantime continue building those relationships in this new year we’ve been given. So happy belated holidays, everyone! Any resolutions, you might ask? Do a better job maintaining the blog. Wish me luck :)Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-33803958711334356622009-12-02T17:06:00.001-06:002009-12-02T17:06:50.970-06:00Time flies when you're having fun...Brittany: “So we’ve got enough stuffing now, and we think this slab of turkey will do fine in the toaster oven, right? …we got cranberries, you brought the pie…”<br /> Molly: “What did we decide about the potatoes?”<br /> Brittany: “Crap, Molly, why didn’t we get that, we were just at the store…?”<br /> Molly: “Well I mentioned it a couple times but, I dunno, I thought you had some other plan in mind, you seemed unconcerned…”<br /> Erin: “It’s cuz you were both lost in all the luxury American foods in that ex-pat grocery store.”<br /> Brittany: “The potatoes you brought aren’t enough?”<br /> Molly: “Britt, I brought 3 smallish potatoes. No that is not enough to make mashed potatoes for five people. And onion, didn’t we say we were going to put onion in the stuffing with the celery for extra flavor?”<br /> Brittany: “Aw man! Why didn’t we remember this stuff before getting in the tuk-tuk?” (= motorized rick-shaw-like taxi taking us from the city-center of Panajachel out to our friend Luis’s house)<br /> Molly: “Maybe Luis will have onion, by some small miracle…”<br /> Erin: “Why didn’t you guys fill me in on the plan, I had no idea we still needed all that.”<br /> Brittany: “Maybe we can get Luis to pick up some onion and potatoes when he comes later…”<br /> Molly: “Sorry, guys…”<br /> Brittany: “It’s not your fault…”<br /><br />Twenty minutes later, upon arrival at Luis’s house to start cooking:<br /><br /> Molly: “Yeah, so, it is as I feared: Luis has one pot. How the heck we gonna make stuffing, mashed potatoes, and gravy if we only got one pot??”<br /> Brittany: “Oh no!... Maybe we’ll go ask the neighbor ladies if we can borrow, like we did the last time? Or we ask Beverly to bring a few pots when she comes? In any case all we have to do right now since it’s early is start boiling water for the potatoes…”<br /> Erin: “This is really funny, normally the two of you are not this absent minded. I’m kinda impressed, actually, at how much has managed to slip your minds!”<br /> Molly and Brittany: “Thanks a lot, Erin!!”<br /><br />And so began the Thanksgiving odyssey of Brittany, Erin, and Molly. Though not the same as the Thanksgivings I treasure in my mind, being away from family and Grandma’s cooking, I am happy to say it all turned out fine and delicious, all crises were solved, and we three Americans were quite satisfied (both emotionally and gastronomically) by the evening’s results. Our two Guatemalan friends, Luis and Beverly, were a bit bewildered by all the stressing out that everything had to be just right; for instance the specific need to eat mush of seasoned old bread cubes, exotic canned berries that aren’t really that much to write home about, and pay so much for a slab of turkey when chicken comes at about one-tenth the price. Then when the meal was about to begin we of course bowed our heads and Brittany lead us in the tradition of everyone saying what they were thankful for, and I suspect Luis and Beverly were even more amused by our strict adherence to a ceremony they probably considered over the top. Britt began in English, unusual for someone so fluent in Spanish, but said pretty much exactly what I was thinking of saying. So when she finished and it was my turn, I gave my thanks in Spanish hoping my lack of something great to say would be masked and made up for with the it’s-not-my-native-tongue excuse. Haha.<br />For the record, the pie I’d made and brought in its pan two hours on the chicken bus from Toto was by faaaaarrr the best part. Not that I'm bragging...<br /><br />Thanksgiving topped off, and was a lovely close to, a very, very busy month of November. And October sure flew by without me knowing it, and now that we’ve begun the month of December I realize I am frighteningly close to finishing my first year in Guatemala! Not sure how it happened, but all the same I find myself looking back, giving thanks at this most-appropriate time of year, and pondering which of the lessons Guatemala has taught me over the past eleven months are most important.<br /><br />The recent month-long visit of a cousin from Canada and her fiancé provided a few of those most-valuable insights and memorable experiences, as the occasion provoked a coming-together of the extended family here like nothing I’d seen. The pair arrived one Sunday culminating the extended family’s two-day efforts here preparing the house and the paches (which are sticky rice tamales with chicken and a red sauce, wrapped in a banana leaf and steam-cooked in a huge pot big enough to bathe a few kids in! QUITE the process!). The aunts who work as teachers had, like the kids, just finished the school year, so in addition to many day-trips with the overseas visitors to the close-by attractions in this country an extended trip was planned to hit the east coast and Tikal, the famous Mayan pyramids in Petén (the jungle-filled northernmost province), among a few others. Despite the fact that it’s a pretty big extended family, they reserved a spot in the minibus for me too! So we all went, 16 of us on this week-long trip to the main wonders of Guatemala, none of which I had seen before – me and 15 Guatemalans! It was so fun! Few are the opportunities to feel as integrated a member of a family as I felt on that trip. Yes, I stood out a bit in appearance, but otherwise I felt like just another cousin on the trip with my aunts, my young cousins, my little brothers and sister – and we saw so much together! Seeing the pyramids and other remnants of an ancient Mayan civilization prompted reflections from the adults on how this was their cultural heritage but that they understood only some of the symbology they saw. Visiting famous caves in Lanquín stirred up conversations later that evening about how many of their uncles or grandfathers or neighbors had according to rumor used caves like those to hide from the forced recruitments or village attacks committed by the military in the years of the guerrilla conflict. In other words, while most foreigners visit these places, marvel at them, and move on to the next scheduled item, my visit to these famous places was undoubtedly enriched by having visited with native Guatemalans. These are people to whom these ancient places matter, have history and meaning and bearing on their current lives, in a certain sense. I doubt I’ll be lucky enough to experience something like that again!<br /><br />And then I was bit by a dog. Wonderful, eh?<br />Normally this goliath of a mutt barks and intimidates, hounding my progress on the path that passes his backyard which I pass twice every day, but he's all talk. Or so I thought. Last sunday morning I passed his house jogging, which is nothing new, but I guess his attitude was. I tried my best firm, not scared but not overly aggressive voice, which usually is sufficient, but he lunged for a piece of my quad muscle, sinking his teeth just above my left knee. Wonderful. I stopped to assess damage in front of the next house, once he and his sidekick had turned back home, and the neighbor lady came out and saw the blood running as I rolled up my pant leg. "Ay Diooooooos!" she exclaims. No shit.<br />The good news is this mutt has his rabies shots! So after treating this big ol' hole in my leg (for which I probably should've had stiches, in hindsight) and trying to avoid too much walking so that it doesn't open up again, I should be good to go. But I guess he got his wish: training for the three half-marathons I've run since July certainly had me going out running quite a bit, but I won't be bothering him running past his house for quite some time now - I won't be running at all till the hole in my leg heals up! So I guess another one of those most important insights that'd make the list would be to start walking with a big stick, or several fist-sized rocks, or a slingshot, or tamales to throw and distract this guy with, all of which are tactics my neighbors have advised me of since the incident. Or maybe the best tactic is e) all of the above.<br /><br />Hope you are well, Happy belated Turkey Day, and a most blessed, merry holiday season. And remember to keep them neighborhood mutts at bay!Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-49256815889703970012009-10-05T16:25:00.009-06:002009-10-10T13:56:49.019-06:00September news - and there's lots!Things are just getting fun now. I think the adaptation phase is ending, and I’m finally an integrated member of the community and citizen of Guatemala, making decisions differently than before and feeling like a competent almost-Guatemalan. Stressors are rolling off like water more easily, and I seem more capable of handling curveballs.<br />Last night was my first night back in my own room since my trip to Minnesota! I might have mentioned that my host parents decided it was the right time to invest in fixing up my half of the house, looking at it as an investment for when their kids will live there, so the walls, ceiling, and floor were completely redone in my room over the past two months. When I left for Minnesota, all of my room’s things got crammed into my little kitchen and my bed on its side in the hallway, while I slept in an extra bed in the main part of the house. It was stressful for a while living in the TV room that leads off to all the other rooms in the house. Meaning that I wake up when they get going in the morning at 5, and was often trying to fall asleep at night with someone working late at the table in the next room, who would then have to pass through my room to go to bed themselves. Also meaning that my bed was the couch for watching TV. I think to some people that sounds terrible, and some people are thinking, that doesn’t sound like a big deal at all… and you’re both right. In a certain sense, it was fun to live in the central hub, because I always knew what was going on and because the family didn’t shy away like they tend to when I hole myself up in my own room to get work done. I think we bonded more since everyone felt as though Molly was really another family member now. And I learned to a great extent how to deal without much privacy. But it was tricky not having private work space (which might speak to the lack of a blog update till now), and with family members constantly around there was no lack of distractions. I feel as though I’ve gotten very little done at home lately, apart from laundry. (Haha, yes the flea saga continues, but I shan’t dwell on that here. :) Some photos of the process: when the construction had just begun...<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/StDmMSEHiaI/AAAAAAAAAN8/HDUiAiXWN-k/s1600-h/roomBefore.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/StDmMSEHiaI/AAAAAAAAAN8/HDUiAiXWN-k/s320/roomBefore.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5391061852644411810" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/StDmMKqwABI/AAAAAAAAAN0/ErFp4bT3-JA/s1600-h/roomAfter.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/StDmMKqwABI/AAAAAAAAAN0/ErFp4bT3-JA/s320/roomAfter.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5391061850658963474" /></a>The finished product when it was still bare...<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/StDmLs_EADI/AAAAAAAAANs/wViKmukMZ1o/s1600-h/New+Room!.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/StDmLs_EADI/AAAAAAAAANs/wViKmukMZ1o/s320/New+Room!.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5391061842691096626" /></a>And now I've moved in! Isn't it just <em>lovely</em>??<br /><br />But I have to admit that not getting work done may have to do with how busy life has been in the last month. September 15th is Guatemalan Independence Day, and here in Toto there were parades and bands and torch-bearing runs. It’s also the only day my good friend Patty from San Antonio, my training town, has off work. And you know what she decided to do with her only day off? Get on a speeding, overcrowded, noisy bus and come the 4 twisting, uncomfortable mountainous hours to visit me in Totonicapán. (For a few hours, then get in a bus again and make the same trek home the same day!) What a friend! First we watched out for Ixchel and José Arnulfo in the parade with their respective schools, and lots of other cute kids and interesting costumes and floats:<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/StDiwCGWmqI/AAAAAAAAANU/lG-PuKyq6jI/s1600-h/25sept_d.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/StDiwCGWmqI/AAAAAAAAANU/lG-PuKyq6jI/s320/25sept_d.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5391058068787600034" /></a>José Arnulfo, my 16-year-old host brother lookin' sharp with his classmates :)<br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/StDiwhOb9XI/AAAAAAAAANc/wEtDejIRbY8/s1600-h/25sept_e.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/StDiwhOb9XI/AAAAAAAAANc/wEtDejIRbY8/s320/25sept_e.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5391058077143004530" /></a>A cool Mayan-Heritage-focused float... there weren't all that many of these actually, I think parades here are so influenced by the North American concept of parades that I see more kids dancing in converse sneaker uniforms and hear marching bands playing American pep band tunes. So this was cool to see.<br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/StDivqD70II/AAAAAAAAANM/pIzNKpBLKVE/s1600-h/25sept_a.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/StDivqD70II/AAAAAAAAANM/pIzNKpBLKVE/s320/25sept_a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5391058062335004802" /></a>I liked the flag they're carrying here, because it bears the four colors that represent Mayan cosmovision: they are the "People of Corn", and there is red corn, black corn, yellow corn, and white corn that grows here. These colors represent the blood, black hair, tan skin, and white bones from which Ajaw (the Great Spirit) composed the body of the first human being. Cool, huh? <br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/StDivLG5JxI/AAAAAAAAANE/xGBR4J8NESE/s1600-h/24sept_a.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/StDivLG5JxI/AAAAAAAAANE/xGBR4J8NESE/s320/24sept_a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5391058054025914130" /></a>Toto's Feria was almost cancelled this year due to Swine Flu. So I think somewhere in the negotiations with the Bureau of Health to let the show go on, it was decided that every school would carry Public Health Education statements and tips on avoiding H1N1 contagion. This banner reads "The H1N1 Flu is an illness of the Respiratory Passages" and the lesson went on from there. Haha.<br /><br />And after all that, Patty and I caught a microbus up the mountain and did the trek to my house - the above picture is Patty on said trek up through the cornfield plots my family has on the mountainside. <a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SspzJr3ObUI/AAAAAAAAAMc/bu_dwMKu5Ac/s1600-h/IMG_5958.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SspzJr3ObUI/AAAAAAAAAMc/bu_dwMKu5Ac/s320/IMG_5958.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5389246514332593474" /></a><br />We arrived in time to help Arnulfo make the last preparations for lunch, who also had the day off (Emiliana, however, who is a teacher, had school-related responsibilities like the kids). Patty and I started making the tortillas... and I was doing better than Patty! She finally gave up after struggling with the same ball of corn tortilla dough for about 15 minutes, and I told her not to worry about it: when I first came to Toto I couldn't turn out tortillas either because the dough has a different thicker consistency and sticks to one's hands more, making it harder! She laughed and I'm not sure if that comment coming from someone who just learned to make tortillas nine months ago was much consolation to someone who´s been making them three times a day all her life. Haha.<br />Eventually everybody arrived back home from their various Independence Day festivities just as lunch was ready (Chicken in Orange Marinade, a la Molly et Arnulfo!), so we took a photo of the happy occasion:<br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Ssp0HVUHWNI/AAAAAAAAAMk/AGaTKb_w-EY/s1600-h/IMG_5962.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Ssp0HVUHWNI/AAAAAAAAAMk/AGaTKb_w-EY/s320/IMG_5962.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5389247573431638226" /></a><br /><br />Not long after Independence Day starts the lead-up to Toto’s Feria. This is like County Fairs in the States, but instead of separate fairgrounds, the central city blocks just fill up for two weeks lined with covered vendors’ stalls and mobile restaurants who come in from all over the country. There were, however, two designated areas for all the mechanized rides that moved in for the occasion: the bus terminals and taxi stand. (You can see why traffic might have been a doubly complicated issue for those 2-3 weeks, with transit not possible downtown and public transit seriously inconvenienced even at the margins.) <a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/StDiwzCEfAI/AAAAAAAAANk/Z2gb3mMfP4k/s1600-h/29sept_hugo.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/StDiwzCEfAI/AAAAAAAAANk/Z2gb3mMfP4k/s320/29sept_hugo.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5391058081922972674" /></a>Hugo, my 8-year-old host brother, enjoying one of the miniature, hand-operated ferris wheels...<br /><br />The most distinctive feature of Feria is the food. The streets were absolutely bursting at the seams with rosca vendors – a rosca is a type of sweet bread that looks like a pretzel but is round, and very crunchy. (You have to douse them in coffee or hot chocolate before eating, says I.) <a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Ss0lNCPCfHI/AAAAAAAAAMs/1Ow1tfY63q4/s1600-h/24sept_b.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Ss0lNCPCfHI/AAAAAAAAAMs/1Ow1tfY63q4/s320/24sept_b.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5390005234900827250" /></a><br />And peanut sellers flood the city from all corners of Guatemala, it seems… I’d estimate there were easily 30 tons of peanuts in my city in huge 200-pound sacks, being sold from every street corner downtown. And the last very distinct Feria feature are the dulces típicos that also line the streets: sugar whirls and bricks of shredded coconut available all colors, candied figs and yams, peanut and pumpkinseed brittle, various cookies and biscuits, and bricks of nougat, marzipan and apple, all glinting from their shiny wrappings. (That was a surprisingly hard sentence to write – I’ve never tried thinking of how to describe or name all of those things in English before!) I decided to start buying and sampling early on, because there were so many I had to try but NO WAY could I do it all in one sitting!<br />All of this was leading up to the actual day of celebration, of course. The music concerts in the central plaza had started way back on the 19th but the actual Feast of San Miguel Arcangel of Totonicapán was the 29th of September. In the buildup to the feria there were all kinds of other events and parades, including a half-marathon right here in Toto! (which was on the same day as another ½ marathon in the capital and therefore not many people showed up for the Toto half, and therefore I placed 7th in the women's bracket! Woohoo!) I did roll my ankle three days before the race, but Emiliana's brother is a naturopath of some sort, and through some very painful massage of my ankle, it was pretty much fine the next day, without using any ice! And afterwards my friend Don Nico (park guard and my running buddy), his family, and I went and walked around Toto to enjoy the Feria.<br />And on the very day of the Feria, we went to visit Arnulfo’s house.<br />My host dad comes from a more modest background, his mother not having gone to school and his sisters probably having received little. So when we go to visit his family in his parents’ house there’s usually not much of the conversation I understand since they speak k’iche’ and never learned much Spanish. The last time we went to visit was Semana Santa, Holy Week, and I felt like the elephant in the room because I was so different and didn’t know what was going on most of the time. Part of the problem, I later guessed, was that they were all in <em>traje</em>, the <em>corte</em> and <em>huipil</em> that the women wear. So this time… this time, I decided to wear traje, to bring a game to play like cards so we wouldn’t all just sit around bored with them just looking at me the whole time, and to try out the little k’iche’ I know with them. Maybe they’d get a kick out of the gringa’s efforts…? It sort of worked. But mostly only my host mom and siblings played cards with me; I also think it was far stranger for them to see a gringa in corte! Haha. <em>Poco a poco</em>, little by little we’ll get used to each other. <br />(A side-story to the Arnulfo's family visit: the knife we found there didn't have enough of a blade to slice the chicken we were going to make for lunch, so the grandma cleaned off the machete, and Emiliana and I went to work dressing the 15 lbs or so of chicken with the machete... classic!)<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Ss0mYHcD0OI/AAAAAAAAAM8/pwGkK4TNaBQ/s1600-h/chuanuj_c.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 250px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Ss0mYHcD0OI/AAAAAAAAAM8/pwGkK4TNaBQ/s320/chuanuj_c.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5390006524787806434" /></a><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Ss0mXpapYuI/AAAAAAAAAM0/jJdcqArKWFw/s1600-h/Chuanuj_b.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Ss0mXpapYuI/AAAAAAAAAM0/jJdcqArKWFw/s320/Chuanuj_b.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5390006516728816354" /></a><br />... and this is also an excuse to show more pictures of me in traje! I bought my own last week too. When I wear it, I'll put up more photos!<br />And in the midst of all this Feria hubbub, I’ve been trying to get a little work done in my park! And at the end of every workday, I’m getting more and more able to identify the progress I made that day and the goals for the projects I have. There have deveinite bumps in the road as far as work is concerned, but overall I love my job. We’re installing a library of ecological books and resources, we got some educational materials printed finally, I’m working on generating a birdwatching tour working to further the training of area youth as guides, and we’re designing interpretive signs for all the stations on our trail. Outside of work in the park, the natural resources board of the Communal Mayors’ Association, called the 48 Cantones de Totonicapán, and I have designed a program working with community leaders toward developing a regional trash management system. I’m well into my k’iche’ classes (although still not near conversational), and take them along with my 14-year-old host sister Ixchel – it’s fun! And while I don’t get to be in the classroom teaching (environmental education in the village school was something I had been pushing for this 2nd semester June-October, but it never happened), I’ve been “working” in the classroom in Minnesota! :) (helps to have a Spanish teacher for a sister, right?) Even though I don’t actually get to be there with her students, Michaela and I have been coordinating on how to integrate lessons on Guatemalan culture into her classes, through letters and activities I write. It’s fun for me, although the time it takes for a letter to arrive from here in an obstacle.<br />Other than that, I have lately been rediscovering that life here can be fun... I've been visiting other Peace Corps Volunteers and Guatemalan friends in the area with the free time I am garnering out of my schedule. One rainy day I went to have breakfast with a friend from training who lives so close to me, but I had never even been to her town. We sat three of us PCVs just chatting for the better part of the day as the rain came down sipping chai tea (a luxury imported good) and it seemed awfully healthy to do that now and then. Here's to finding rhythm in life. Hope you're enjoying yours.Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-57423563261209061762009-08-19T09:20:00.000-06:002009-08-19T09:22:16.948-06:00Missing...Although seven months hardly feels like it merits the reward of a trip back home to Minnesota (when compared to the twenty months that remain), return home I did – the pretense was a close friend’s wedding. I arrived on a Wednesday afternoon to a sister dancing to see me in the airport, dinner at Kay’s Kitchen, ending by visiting with grandparents next door late into the evening. And that right there is a small sampling of the kinds of things I did for those ten days I was home, the kinds of things a true-blue Minnesotan does to… well, enjoy limited time in Minnesota! And it seemed odd, this oasis of all things familiar and comfortable spliced into my otherwise foreign current life. Such a brief and fleeting reality! But a wonderful one. Going home really felt like I just slipped back into myself. I’ve heard it said that culture is like the water fish swim in: we don’t realize we’re in it, until we’re not. Grampa, this one’s for you: I felt like Big Mouth Billy Bass, and someone finally took me to the river and plopped me back in the water!<br />I think on any adventure there are times when we wish like hell we were home. Kids at summer camp feel like that, no matter how much fun they’re having; Voyageurs trips feel this way; I’d guess most folks serving overseas in the military probably know what I mean. We start wondering what we’d be doing if we were home, making mental lists of the things we miss, maybe pondering the first thing we’ll do when we get there. Yes, I feel like that sometimes here in Guatemala, too. And think, Oh! How wonderful it will be to be home, sweet home! And, well… it was! It was absolutely perfect – or pretty dang close.<br />But this was the first time in my life that I’ve had that wish granted of going home in the middle of one of those adventures only to hit the trail again, so to speak, and pick up where I left off. And maybe it’s good that we are rarely granted that wish, to abort the mission and return, however briefly, to whatever place or person or state of mind that is “home”- you might find yourself wishing you were still adventuring or, conversely, you may find your resolve to return to the task at hand considerably weakened. I think both happened to me. The time spent with family and friends was so meaningful and filled me up overflowing with gratitude for the blessings I’ve received in my life, particularly the people in it, that I started to wonder what’s the point in abandoning all of this to try and make a life in Guatemala. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? Wouldn’t it be great to just stay here, and continue to have great conversations with siblings, grandparents, neighbors, old friends, to continue making these great memories instead of only remembering ones from long ago and far away?<br />I’m no authority on the typical emotional processing of ex-pats or PCVs in specific, visiting home… but I would say that’s probably THE question that they ask themselves when the vacation home comes to a close.<br />But I’m nowhere near ready to be done with Guatemala! Strange as it sounds, I missed my host family the whole time I was in Minnesota. I woke up the first several mornings around 6, late for me in my Guatemala life, and found myself longing for the bustle of activity and flurry of humorous conversations normally filling up that time of day. I was almost waiting to hear Arnulfo say “Good morning!”and make me laugh, and I missed having somebody (i.e. him) to run with. I missed the way Guatemalans say “Buen Provecho!”after every meal to give closure and thank everyone for the good food and good company. I missed the humor and irony of certain commonly-used Guatemalan phrases and ended up teaching them to my family because they kept slipping out! (and then I’d just get funny looks from people when Spanish accidentally came out… actually, when in an American restroom once, someone rapped on my stall and asked if it was occupied and I responded with an emphatic Sí!) I missed the cooperativeness of making food together and learning from each other, maybe especially because everyone in my host family takes a lot of interest in good food and how to prepare it. I missed hugs from my host siblings (and I got REALLY good ones from Ixchel and José Arnulfo when I arrived home on Sunday!) I missed mountains and crazy erratic topography – I actually caught myself staring at the Minnesota horizon and thinking, Now wouldn’t this be better if there were some mountains over there? just more interesting, just one little mountain range over there in the distance? I missed the slanting afternoon light in the mountains and how cool it looks when it sometimes filters through the clouds clinging to the hills down below my house, and the way clouds sometimes crest the mountain and come cascading down on our house like a waterfall. And though I complain about the cold, I missed the cozy thickness of my 3-4 blankets and snuggling in for the night. <br />Speaking of nights, Minnesota nights are so still and quiet! I was astounded to awake in the morning and think – I didn’t hear a single thing all night! Boy, I tell you what, I did NOT miss those dogs barking up a war outside my windows or the roosters announcing a dawn that’s still 3 hours away, nor the cats pouncing on mice and making a racket in my ceiling. And I didn’t miss the fleas!! (They’re breaking records now: I think it took them a day and a half to find me anew, bug repellent lotion and spray apparently irrelevant.)<br />And while I will surely sit and ponder homesickness and absence and the heart growing fonder these next few months – weighing these against fleas, barking dogs, and numb toes, mind you – it has become apparent just how much Guatemala is becoming part of me. or how much I am becoming part of Guatemala. I surely have innumerable days at the Roske Cabin at the lake, countless visits to Kay’s Kitchen or the SJU Refectory if I want them, many a chat with grandparents and neighbors and friends awaiting me in my future. But how many times do I get to play in a rock-paper-scissors double-elimination tournament with Hugo, Ixchel, and José Arnulfo? How many opportunities will I have to listen to Emiliana’s stories of all the protesting and campaigning she did back in the day to win women’s rights or get funding for public education? How many more chances will I have to go running with Arnulfo in the mornings? How many deluxe-chocolate birthday cakes will be baked before it’s time for me to return to my American reality for good? Not all that many, in the grand scheme of things. In the end it’s all about counting one’s blessings… and I’m blessed enough to have plenty to count both in Guatemala and in Minnesota. It’s nice to be reminded of them now and again, and thinking of it that way helps me not miss home too much. Besides, spend all my time missing things that are somewhere else, and I’m sure to find I’ve missed out on life here.Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-21230328595534566642009-07-29T13:02:00.006-06:002009-08-10T08:45:38.126-06:00a few photos real quickTo get my quetzales (money's) worth out of my internet time today, I decided to aprovechar (take advantage) and post a few pictures even though I have no content to post with them. Hope you enjoy anyway!<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SnCd9XBZyXI/AAAAAAAAAMU/9b--GL5Pneo/s1600-h/IMG_5893.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SnCd9XBZyXI/AAAAAAAAAMU/9b--GL5Pneo/s320/IMG_5893.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5363960833675741554" /></a>I made José Arulfo a chocolate cake for his 16th birthday <em></em>just like<em></em> the one I made for Kate´s going away party (see photos below) - because he kept joking that I was in debt to the family, specifically him, for having baked that other cake and then taken it away. But this one didn't want to come out of it´s pan... so we frosted it and lit it up as-is. I think it tasted just as good. :)<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SnCd9E2EbTI/AAAAAAAAAMM/lc6TikMT1K8/s1600-h/IMG_5891.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SnCd9E2EbTI/AAAAAAAAAMM/lc6TikMT1K8/s320/IMG_5891.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5363960828796366130" /></a>Maybe you all think taking pictures of my own clothes drying on the line is weird, but I just liked the look of the scenery and the little bit of town (Toto) that's visible through the washline.<br />And also that pinabete (avies guatemalensis, the pine tree to the right that's an endagered and beautiful fir species) that my host mom is AWFUL proud to have growing in the yard.<br /> <br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SnCd8h5DMoI/AAAAAAAAAME/Z-1y5bn4KmA/s1600-h/IMG_5890.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SnCd8h5DMoI/AAAAAAAAAME/Z-1y5bn4KmA/s320/IMG_5890.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5363960819413627522" /></a>A beautiful sunset over Totonicapán, no?<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SnCd8Lf8obI/AAAAAAAAAL8/TwpLEp-Zp7Q/s1600-h/IMG_5877.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SnCd8Lf8obI/AAAAAAAAAL8/TwpLEp-Zp7Q/s320/IMG_5877.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5363960813402759602" /></a>Rainbows are a rarity here, because when it´s raining it´s usually completely cloudy and no sun makes it through at all.Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-73553443210834624332009-07-20T07:49:00.008-06:002009-08-10T08:37:42.893-06:00July LandmarksA few landmarks have recently passed in my world here: I have officially been in my new site for three months now (a Peace Corps "magic number"), and my Reconnect Conference for my training group is coming up. It was also recently my birthday. Combined, these two events call for a lot of reflection on my life here in Guatemala and self-evaluation on how I'm doing. Now that I've lived in my community for over three months, do I feel as integrated and connected here as I had hoped to be by the time Reconnect rolled around? Do I feel I've built relationships and trust, do I feel I belong and that the community accepts me?<br />Well, frankly, not as much as I had hoped. Maybe my standards for myself were a bit high when I envisioned myself at 3 months, maybe I had "delusions of grandeur" of how great a PCV I was gonna be. Or, on the other hand, maybe I just got lazy at some point and called a quits on really trying to branch out past my host family and my work in the park, to get involved in my community. I suspect there are truths to both those scenarios...<br />It kinda goes without saying, but I would like to emphasize that trying to integrate into a new community is HARD! At first, I expended an awful lot of energy on being friendly, chatting with everyone I ran into, trying to remember faces and names - just generally putting myself out there, a little vulnerable-feeling, open to new experiences and people. But I guess I didn't go much beyond that, and it's starting to feel like my current reality hasn't grown or been shaped by anything new in a while now. As human beings, we naturally settle into a rhythm and when we're satisfied we leave it as-is. But life as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I'm realizing, means constant analysis, constant brainstorming, constant creativity about what ELSE I could be doing, or who else should I meet or talk to - and therefore also requires constant courage to try out those ideas. It's quite a dilemma: still seems I don't know that many people in my town, which is not satisfactory to me, yet it's intimidating thinking about trying to go and meet them all. It's also intimidating to commit right now to new project ideas when they aren't related to my assignment - these are what Peace Corps calls "secondary projects." For me things like teaching English, working on community building projects, or working with the local women's group would be examples of secondary projects. But as I'm still holding my breath for things to pick up with projects in my park, I seem phobic of these other project ideas that have been coming my way, not wanting to get overcommitted. It's like I'm holding off waiting for the moment to be right, when it's not going to be any more "right" than right now!<br />But giving myself credit and recognizing successes, albeit small ones, is also an important skill for me to start developing. Last week a group of women biology students from the main university in the country came to study bees in our park, and Don Nico (one of the park guards) and I also took them to a certain sunny spot in the communal forest. And in explaining to them all kinds of things about the environment here in the highlands of Totonicapan, and then all the details about my community and who's who, I realized I actually <em></em>do<em></em> know a great deal... and that it would be awful hard to do the kind of work I do (or the kind of work these biologists came to do) if I didn't have a brain stuffed full of all that stuff. Furthermore, when we walked around my town, people recognized me, even if I didn't know them! And so for once, at least in comparison to these biologists from the capital, I wasn't the strangest-looking stranger in town! A good sign.<br />And last but not least, my birthday... turned out to be a lot more eventful than expected! It started with inviting my good friend Brittany to come to my house for the day to help me celebrate. I've stayed at her house several times now and gotten to know her family pretty well (we get along splendidly). But I've always lamented the lack of a good premise for Britt to come visit me and get to know MY host family, because they're such good people and I knew she'd love them. So the birthday was our chance... but that's not all. Apparently the evening before, Brittany's host mom Doña Horalia mentioned the need to go make purchases for her small clothing store in one of the bigger city's markets, but was undecided where to go (Guatemala City? Too far, a bit dangerous; Quetzaltenango? Always goes there, never anything new; Totonicapán? hm...) Britt mentioned she was heading to Toto the next day for my birthday and encouraged them to consider coming too - and that settled it! They called us to propose the idea, and we decided to have a big lunch at my house for our new guests (and I suppose for the birthday girl...☺) Now this was a major and rather gracious undertaking by my host family. Not only did we find out we'd be making a big lunch for six guests at 9 pm the night before, but they also had plans to be at church that entire Saturday morning, and my host mom wasn't going to be around due to her enrollment in a Saturday university class. So it fell to my host dad Arnulfo, sister Ixchel, Brittany (who came early) and I to make lunch... and it was actually kinda fun! But the real joy of this day was that Doña Horalia, Don Miguel Angel, and their 3 teenage boys ALL came the whole way up the mountain from Toto in their little car, traipsed through the <em></em>milpa<em></em> (corn fields) with me to get to my house, sucked in their breath in amazement at the view and commented continuously on how beautiful it all was... They kept telling me how good it was to see where I lived and to meet the good people I live with, kept saying how special a day it was because it was my birthday. And I felt so loved that my family would go to such great lengths and greatly inconvenience themselves to accomodate my unexpected guests and make it a special day, and that another family had come a long way to the house of complete strangers to help me celebrate - it means a lot to me and helps me feel like I have a place here in the hearts of a few Guatemalans. And they too definitely have a place in mine. It's interesting that in this small event I see the manifestation of a much bigger purpose: Doña Horalia said that because of Brittany and I being such friends and opening our hearts and friendships with both these families, "Through you, we have the opportunity to get to know another family of our own countrymen that we never would have met otherwise. How good it is that you bring us this opportunity!" And so sometimes, just by opening our hearts to new friendships and new people, we create lasting relationships between other people in our lives too. It felt like we built a bridge there. It reminds me that sometimes things <em></em>other<em></em> than my work, my actual assignment, might matter more and have a more lasting impact. And that relationship-building and "secondary projects" don't have to be intimidating at all - sometimes they're just inevitable and delightful, and that's the whole point.<br />So frankly this is a good point of reference, a good time to take the lessons I've learned from all kinds of little events like the ones I've written about here, and re-focus myself toward being a better Volunteer. It helps me be more intentional at how I'm living my PCV life, instead of just letting myself sail on through it and allowing it to just pass me by. After all, the unexamined life is not worth living. So I keep on examining... and encourage you to do likewise.Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-66433734553513808792009-07-08T14:31:00.000-06:002009-07-08T14:32:24.662-06:00Thoughts originally thought on Monday, June 29thI woke up this morning not really thinking about how everything had changed, despite all the discombobulated piles of recently-arrived things and new furniture everywhere. I went to the window, as I usually do in the morning, and looked down the valley over the city of Totonicapán, where the clouds were clinging like thick broth at the bottom of a bowl, as they usually do in the morning. I thought about how this might be one of those days when Kate, getting up in her apartment in town, might be fooled into thinking that today would be cloudy and rainy, when actually up here in the mountains it’s clear and bright.<br />And then I remembered that there’s no Kate living in Toto to ponder the weather anymore. Yesterday my best friend in Toto left to go back home!<br />More than anything else, what’s been on my mind through this process of Kate wrapping up her life here, is that I am not looking forward to the day when I have to find closure to my life here too. It started with meetings to wrap up her projects and introduce me to key people she worked with; then it was me scrambling to plan a few surprise going-away parties for her; then we were planning when and how to move all the stuff she had in her apartment that she planned to bequeath to me up the mountain to my house, since I decided to continue living with my host family (hence all the new things and furniture in my room referenced earlier). And while my head was still spinning from all that, at the end I had to think of how to tell her how thankful I am for how much she´s helped and guided me. <br />We moved everything up the mountain on Saturday, and since her apartment was no longer furnished she would be staying with friends up here in the village that night. And so the community organized themselves and invited us to a big prayer service in the church, where the outpouring of goodwill was almost tangible. After rosaries and a Gospel reading, Don Nico called Kate forward to stand in front to receive the line of those waiting to give goodbye-hugs – as is the custom here for birthdays, despedidas, etc. It apparently works for welcome ceremonies too: Don Nico then asked me to come up and stand a few feet away from her to receive the same line of huggers, only they were welcome-hugs instead, I guess. This, and the speech I was asked to give afterwards, certainly took me by surprise! I knew the names of maybe half the people who were hugging me (so of course I thought it a good idea, after graciously thanking him or her for the kind words of bienvenida, to ask “And what’s your name?” and try like hell to remember them all). Everyone in that church had something kind and thankful to say to Kate as they hugged goodbye – talk about having an impact in the community! Several were taking advantage of the moment and asking her how to get copies of the bird guide book and the endemic species láminas, which seemed like the perfect culmination of her Peace Corps service… there they were, wanting to know more and actually use the documents the volunteer generated!<br />In the end, I felt very much in her shadow. She has accomplished so much and is beloved in the village. Can you imagine a small town in rural Minnesota throwing a going away party for a foreigner who’s been living and working there for two years, and at the same time throwing a welcome party for the next foreigner coming to take their place? Hm, when was the last time immigrants in the US were given that kind of welcome, or that kind of farewell? There were a few men present at that prayer service who I know have spent considerable time and experienced considerable discrimination as illegal immigrants in the United States, and I couldn’t help but think of how incredibly gracious it was of them to come to this prayer service for two gringas in their village when they received nothing of the sort those years they spent on our soil.<br />Kate left on Sunday morning, and there were no tears but much sorrow. She will be missed, and I will undoubtedly be the main conduit of news between her and the community for the next year and nine months!<br />There was another traveler in town that weekend, actually: a friend of mine from my former work in Alaska, Jennifer, was touring Guatemala and fit two days in Toto into her itinerary. Now, Jen doesn’t speak much Spanish, so after being rescued from the rain in Central Park by my host mom, Emiliana (as Jen was sitting on a park bench thinking she would have to wait another several hours of this before my workshop in a different community was over and I could come get her), being whisked spur-of-the-moment to lunch at Aunt Margarita’s house, and then going with Emiliana as her guide up the mountain in the crowded back of a pick-up to our house… I think Jen can vouch for how kind most Totonicapánians are! They just took her right under their wings, though a stranger and unable to communicate with them. When I arrived at the house that afternoon, she had just come back from a nice mountaintop walk with Hugo, my 8-yr-old host brother, so it was obvious that she’d get along fine. I learned that it’s surprisingly stressful for me having guests who don’t speak much Spanish, but at the same time I think their capacity to learn and get a lot out of the experience is greater.<br />Plus she was a great help on Moving Day! Haha, “hay que aprovechar!” (gotta take advantage!)<br />But now I’m my own source of ideas, projects, successes and failures! Time to get the lead out. In a sense I’ve been resting on Kate’s laurels these first three months of my service in Totonicapán, since her work was an easy source of something to do and a way to feel like I was contributing. Now I’m looking forward to initiating environmental education lessons in some of the Totonicapán schools, creating a working library of ecological resources in my park, installing interactive ecological exhibits in our park museum, working with the Community Council of my village to improve their communal meeting space infrastructure through a grant application, and working with our Directorate (CDRO) toward developing a community tourism network in my village in coordination with CDRO’s other income-generation projects and initiatives. And yes, I am aware that that’s an awfully big to-do list! It’s good to have high hopes, right?<br />So that’s the news from Lake Wobegon, folks… or, well, you know what I mean. (I hear Garrison had a recent show from Avon, MN – woot woot! Wish I could’ve been there for that one, the show coming home…) In any case, wishing you well and a happy belated 4th of July!Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-34233643029382880162009-07-08T12:53:00.015-06:002009-07-10T15:16:00.887-06:00Photos, finally!I'm finally getting around to posting some much-needed photos! Starting from a while back, then... March, to be precise.<br /><br />My training group at our Swearing-In ceremony<br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTtnVMqVVI/AAAAAAAAAGc/baC-aR2EUjQ/s1600-h/01_SwearinGroup.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTtnVMqVVI/AAAAAAAAAGc/baC-aR2EUjQ/s320/01_SwearinGroup.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356167116811294034" /></a>My APCD, i.e. my boss, Flavio, with the four of us from my training town.<br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTuhfmdkFI/AAAAAAAAAGk/luEsRPZnWhE/s1600-h/01_SwearinSAACFlavio.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTuhfmdkFI/AAAAAAAAAGk/luEsRPZnWhE/s320/01_SwearinSAACFlavio.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356168116036276306" /></a>Brittany and I with our Spanish professor, Jorge... what a good guy, I still miss our Spanish classes...<br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTtnJdBPNI/AAAAAAAAAGU/hFSi7MVOwx0/s1600-h/01_SwearinJorgeBritt.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTtnJdBPNI/AAAAAAAAAGU/hFSi7MVOwx0/s320/01_SwearinJorgeBritt.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356167113658678482" /></a>The two of us again with Martha, our Country Director (the Director of Peace Corps-Guatemala)<br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTtm2_yeVI/AAAAAAAAAGM/9C0kQrnUXLA/s1600-h/01_SwearinMarthaBritt.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTtm2_yeVI/AAAAAAAAAGM/9C0kQrnUXLA/s320/01_SwearinMarthaBritt.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356167108704237906" /></a>Big-group dinner after Swearing-In, at a pizza place in Antigua with ruins in back! Good friends Johanna, Oliver, Brittany, and Maria<br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT8g0WDQ1I/AAAAAAAAALk/L0ybDO_4zLc/s1600-h/AntiguaSmallgrpChaman.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT8g0WDQ1I/AAAAAAAAALk/L0ybDO_4zLc/s320/AntiguaSmallgrpChaman.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356183497587508050" /></a>After Swearing-In and dinner on the town, Rebecca and I decide it's time for some hard-earned celebration in Antigua. <br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT9hKl4yTI/AAAAAAAAALs/Ff3ziN6E7N0/s1600-h/AntiguaRebeccaMe.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT9hKl4yTI/AAAAAAAAALs/Ff3ziN6E7N0/s320/AntiguaRebeccaMe.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356184603071138098" /></a>Last day before the move to my new site, on the roof of my hostel, settling the final details and getting ready <br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT9hQQYKeI/AAAAAAAAAL0/atEJBaCYIq4/s1600-h/AntiguaMeCandid.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT9hQQYKeI/AAAAAAAAAL0/atEJBaCYIq4/s320/AntiguaMeCandid.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356184604591532514" /></a>One of my first weekends here my host family got real excited about climbing Campana Abaj, the summit of the mountain we live on. It's mentioned in a post below; here we are on the ascent, Arnulfo and Hugo leading the way and still in good spirits...<br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT8guB_j7I/AAAAAAAAALc/S2haF62WeN8/s1600-h/Ao_CampingAscentLideres.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT8guB_j7I/AAAAAAAAALc/S2haF62WeN8/s320/Ao_CampingAscentLideres.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356183495892766642" /></a>...with Emiliana and José Arnulfo and Emiliana not so convinced this is a good idea. Turns out they were right.<br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT8gHoVgxI/AAAAAAAAALU/yFk8wmZ0XzI/s1600-h/Ao_CampingAscentMila.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT8gHoVgxI/AAAAAAAAALU/yFk8wmZ0XzI/s320/Ao_CampingAscentMila.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356183485584605970" /></a>Let's just say we got back a little wet. First day of the Rainy Season! What are the odds?<br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT8f9ypJlI/AAAAAAAAALE/TjOGARDp9wo/s1600-h/Ao_CampingReturnCandid.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT8f9ypJlI/AAAAAAAAALE/TjOGARDp9wo/s320/Ao_CampingReturnCandid.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356183482943481426" /></a>But still, people are in good spirits.<br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT8fy6KYdI/AAAAAAAAALM/p6CJv99tqLY/s1600-h/Ao_CampingReturnBoys.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT8fy6KYdI/AAAAAAAAALM/p6CJv99tqLY/s320/Ao_CampingReturnBoys.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356183480022229458" /></a>An adventure, we're calling it.<br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT6ZMKD7rI/AAAAAAAAAK8/pWhlCJzlLaM/s1600-h/Ao_CampingReturnGroup.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT6ZMKD7rI/AAAAAAAAAK8/pWhlCJzlLaM/s320/Ao_CampingReturnGroup.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356181167517462194" /></a>They all made fun of me for getting down and washing dishes with the ladies who prepared the meal - or rather, they were making fun of Yovani and Luis who never do that, and here I was on my knees.<br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT6Y7hewLI/AAAAAAAAAK0/q9XW2ZAU-QM/s1600-h/ApriscoDishes.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT6Y7hewLI/AAAAAAAAAK0/q9XW2ZAU-QM/s320/ApriscoDishes.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356181163052286130" /></a>Kate held a training course for youth from the village in Tourism Guiding and Natural Resource Management, to train them to be guides in our park and also to be better-trained in managing the parcel of the Communal Forest they belong to. Here I am facilitating a game of "Birdie on a Perch" (any PRPs reading this will love that...) we called it "Chipe in su Nido" or Warbler in its Nest.<br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT6Yuvli4I/AAAAAAAAAKs/jsBLKnBLM6s/s1600-h/ApriscoJovenesGame.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT6Yuvli4I/AAAAAAAAAKs/jsBLKnBLM6s/s320/ApriscoJovenesGame.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356181159621790594" /></a>The youth in the course, on Graduation day, with we the park staff<br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT6YQgKsnI/AAAAAAAAAKk/JKk0Rq5dwn8/s1600-h/ApriscoJovenesGraduation.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT6YQgKsnI/AAAAAAAAAKk/JKk0Rq5dwn8/s320/ApriscoJovenesGraduation.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356181151504052850" /></a>The point of the course was to create alliances between our CDRO Association Directorate and the Board of Directors of the Parcialidad to which all these youth belong. This photo includes all those actors involved in the course, on graduation day.<br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT6YHotHhI/AAAAAAAAAKc/-uV_lpIZ8NU/s1600-h/ApriscoJovenesTodos.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT6YHotHhI/AAAAAAAAAKc/-uV_lpIZ8NU/s320/ApriscoJovenesTodos.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356181149123943954" /></a><br />I love this picture of my counterpart, Yovani, doing what he does best. Here he is at one of the 8 stations on our trail, teaching what habitat is.<br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT31cHDHwI/AAAAAAAAAKU/IfiR4PDzqZE/s1600-h/ApriscoYovaRecorrido.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT31cHDHwI/AAAAAAAAAKU/IfiR4PDzqZE/s320/ApriscoYovaRecorrido.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356178354301247234" /></a>Emiliana is on my village's Water Committee, Comité de Agua, which is in charge of capturing water from springs up the mountain that will find its way to all the homes. It's a big (unpaid) job that takes up a lot of weekends, like this Sunday when I went with to do some maintenance on one of the tanks/tubes that had broken. A good group of folks who take the time for the needs of their community receiving little in return.<br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT307xo0UI/AAAAAAAAAKM/4F3FZvIWlPA/s1600-h/ComiteAguaGroup.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT307xo0UI/AAAAAAAAAKM/4F3FZvIWlPA/s320/ComiteAguaGroup.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356178345621508418" /></a>Kate and I went over to Doña Delphina's house one day when she and Gabi were preparing chuchitos (like what we would consider tamales) for a big group. We helped! I still say I did more, since Kate was off playing with the kids most of the time :)<br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT30uQyZYI/AAAAAAAAAKE/Ikw0s91khUc/s1600-h/ChuchitosEnvolver.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT30uQyZYI/AAAAAAAAAKE/Ikw0s91khUc/s320/ChuchitosEnvolver.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356178341994063234" /></a>Me at the piedra! The piedra (really, its name is just "rock") is used to grind pretty much anything - in this case, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, roasted red peppers, roasted tomatoes, and bread crumbs.<br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT30cf6FZI/AAAAAAAAAJ8/jVEMpwcRm_k/s1600-h/ChuchitosMemoler.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT30cf6FZI/AAAAAAAAAJ8/jVEMpwcRm_k/s320/ChuchitosMemoler.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356178337225643410" /></a>We went to the inauguration of the Interpretive Trail at another park not too far from here, where another PCV and some friends of Kate's work. Luis, walking right behind me, was one of the artists who worked on the project in that park.<br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT30AOC_vI/AAAAAAAAAJ0/BTcvvi2hHmM/s1600-h/ChuiraxTrailwalk.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT30AOC_vI/AAAAAAAAAJ0/BTcvvi2hHmM/s320/ChuiraxTrailwalk.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356178329634537202" /></a>Ellory and Chris came to visit me for a day at the end of their semester studying in Quetzaltenango (the city otherwise known as Xela). I wanted to show them the park, and little Hugo and cousin César wanted to come too. Here we are hugging one of the bigger trees along the trail in the park.<br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT1WE6HD6I/AAAAAAAAAJs/qX7NoPfaovc/s1600-h/ElloryChrisApriscoTree.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT1WE6HD6I/AAAAAAAAAJs/qX7NoPfaovc/s320/ElloryChrisApriscoTree.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356175616473763746" /></a>Outside the park entrance, all of us! It was a fun visit, but too short... guess you'll both have to come back soon, guys!<br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT1WKxwOsI/AAAAAAAAAJk/N0wDBL89tCE/s1600-h/ElloryChrisnkidsAprisco.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT1WKxwOsI/AAAAAAAAAJk/N0wDBL89tCE/s320/ElloryChrisnkidsAprisco.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356175618049325762" /></a>The Volunteers in the departments of Totonicapán and of Sololá just south of me, hosted a party to welcome all the new recruits. The Lago de Atitlán is in Sololá, so naturally our party was on the lake, at a place you can only get to by boat. Theo (Ellory is his little sister) met up with us to join in the fun - and also to join in on the mango-yogurt and avocado-cracker snack.<br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT1V_ayX9I/AAAAAAAAAJc/ko4AN9xTKm4/s1600-h/IguanaLancha.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT1V_ayX9I/AAAAAAAAAJc/ko4AN9xTKm4/s320/IguanaLancha.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356175615000207314" /></a>Did I mention the party was a costume party?<br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT1VjzqEmI/AAAAAAAAAJU/-s1XvR9Z_JA/s1600-h/IguanaTheocostume.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT1VjzqEmI/AAAAAAAAAJU/-s1XvR9Z_JA/s320/IguanaTheocostume.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356175607588328034" /></a>The Lago de Atitlán, historically speaking, was an enormous volcano that monumentally exploded and left a huge crater in its wake. But it's still a volcanically active place, so now it´s a highland lake surrounded by active volcanoes. Good swimmin hole, eh?<br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT1VZ_tpyI/AAAAAAAAAJM/OV99GtPjTuY/s1600-h/LagoSwimming.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlT1VZ_tpyI/AAAAAAAAAJM/OV99GtPjTuY/s320/LagoSwimming.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356175604954539810" /></a><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTzGdUIRfI/AAAAAAAAAJE/sNc3eDCu6NY/s1600-h/LagoVista.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTzGdUIRfI/AAAAAAAAAJE/sNc3eDCu6NY/s320/LagoVista.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356173149124183538" /></a>My host family and I went down to Aunt Rosa's house ("Tía Chochi") for Mother's Day, Día de la Madre. Tía Lita (Aunt Margarita) and her daughter Narda made stuffed turkey, and the meal was scrumptious! Only problem was, we all overstuffed ourselves and the whole extended family had bad gas for the next day. haha...<br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTzGJhs9II/AAAAAAAAAI8/JsrUhp2irsg/s1600-h/MothersDayFood.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTzGJhs9II/AAAAAAAAAI8/JsrUhp2irsg/s320/MothersDayFood.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356173143812404354" /></a>They decided to dress me up in traje, which I wasn't at all opposed to! I got this pretty purple corte (the skirt) and huipil (the blouse) and took a photo with Ixchel my host sister and Emiliana my host mom. They don't smile much in photos, but I can assure you they are giggly, happy and funny people. I had a good time that day. (p.s. they made me stand down a stair or two so there wouldn't be such a height difference. hehe)<br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTzGCo2lVI/AAAAAAAAAI0/leiXyP1ts80/s1600-h/MTrajeMilaIxchel.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTzGCo2lVI/AAAAAAAAAI0/leiXyP1ts80/s320/MTrajeMilaIxchel.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356173141963347282" /></a>I only let them convince me to dress up in traje if Narda did, too. She doesn't wear the traje, and nor does her mom Tía Lita, but all the other women in the family do. So the aunts all begged her to dress up in traje too. And this photo ensued.<br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTzF_jr9HI/AAAAAAAAAIs/NyYB-MZH-vw/s1600-h/MTrajeNarda.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTzF_jr9HI/AAAAAAAAAIs/NyYB-MZH-vw/s320/MTrajeNarda.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356173141136372850" /></a>One morning when out birding with Kate, two younger siblings of one of the assistants came with. We found a big tree to take a picture of.<br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTzFhu6NgI/AAAAAAAAAIk/q2Ky-xKILjQ/s1600-h/TotoBirdingkidsNTree.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTzFhu6NgI/AAAAAAAAAIk/q2Ky-xKILjQ/s320/TotoBirdingkidsNTree.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356173133130380802" /></a><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTvVUrr-zI/AAAAAAAAAIc/xCDgi0pnpLo/s1600-h/TotoBirdingKidsTreeBig.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTvVUrr-zI/AAAAAAAAAIc/xCDgi0pnpLo/s320/TotoBirdingKidsTreeBig.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356169006458600242" /></a>... It's a pretty big tree, folks.<br />Here are some nice shots of what the highlands of Guatemala are like... beautiful forests, lots of fog, gorgeous sunsets on my walk home, etc.<br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTvU6oHgeI/AAAAAAAAAIU/Nhx2N5Wz6Lc/s1600-h/TotoBosqueFog.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTvU6oHgeI/AAAAAAAAAIU/Nhx2N5Wz6Lc/s320/TotoBosqueFog.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356168999464305122" /></a><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTvUqZ9rjI/AAAAAAAAAIM/Y7a8F5iVVR8/s1600-h/TotoBosqueSunlight.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTvUqZ9rjI/AAAAAAAAAIM/Y7a8F5iVVR8/s320/TotoBosqueSunlight.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356168995109973554" /></a><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTvUXceoRI/AAAAAAAAAIE/nKntwb8tOE0/s1600-h/TotoBuenaVista.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTvUXceoRI/AAAAAAAAAIE/nKntwb8tOE0/s320/TotoBuenaVista.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356168990020247826" /></a><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTvUBa-nkI/AAAAAAAAAH8/Tu7owDmZhwc/s1600-h/TotoSunset1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTvUBa-nkI/AAAAAAAAAH8/Tu7owDmZhwc/s320/TotoSunset1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356168984108375618" /></a><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTvE4QhRcI/AAAAAAAAAH0/ZvGRlg0aqfI/s1600-h/TotoSunset3.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTvE4QhRcI/AAAAAAAAAH0/ZvGRlg0aqfI/s320/TotoSunset3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356168723950552514" /></a><br />The rest of these photos were taken in the park on Kate's last day, the day of her "despedida" (going away party). Everyone pitched in to help make the meal (Yes, even the men!). We're all going to miss her.<br /><br />The kitchen in my park: Yovani, Gabi (Luis's wife), Luis, Kate, Don Nico<br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTvEmVsbtI/AAAAAAAAAHs/6w1qVPpQffA/s1600-h/Y_DespedidaPrepAll.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTvEmVsbtI/AAAAAAAAAHs/6w1qVPpQffA/s320/Y_DespedidaPrepAll.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356168719140417234" /></a> Don Boni, with help from Juanito (Luis and Gabi's son)<br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTvEtpaQrI/AAAAAAAAAHk/RvnQC1jVFxM/s1600-h/Y_DespedidaPrepBoniJuan.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTvEtpaQrI/AAAAAAAAAHk/RvnQC1jVFxM/s320/Y_DespedidaPrepBoniJuan.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356168721102160562" /></a>Lunch: fried fish (mojarra)! and salad and avocado... man I love food in Guatemala! (mmm... better qualify that statement...)<br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTvEW2DTII/AAAAAAAAAHc/Lwp5VbXhfok/s1600-h/Ya_DespedidaPlate.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTvEW2DTII/AAAAAAAAAHc/Lwp5VbXhfok/s320/Ya_DespedidaPlate.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356168714981166210" /></a>You'll note the only blond in the photo: my friend Jen was visiting for a couple days and joined in on the festivities<br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTvEHbT56I/AAAAAAAAAHU/teVo5bEHw7o/s1600-h/Yb_Despedidalunch.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTvEHbT56I/AAAAAAAAAHU/teVo5bEHw7o/s320/Yb_Despedidalunch.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356168710842476450" /></a>Not sure what was so funny... probably Yovani, as usual.<br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTuyY_WXGI/AAAAAAAAAHM/GWBnkva24Os/s1600-h/Yb_DespedidaLunchfunny.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 314px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTuyY_WXGI/AAAAAAAAAHM/GWBnkva24Os/s320/Yb_DespedidaLunchfunny.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356168406319389794" /></a>Did I mention I made the cake? This was quite the undertaking the night before, Jen can attest to that as she was staying with me! It turned out wonderfully. It also instigated an interesting conversation that morning with Don Bonifacio on what pride is (k'iche' is his first language, and I don't think anyone had ever explained to him what "orgullo", pride in Spanish, meant) because I said I was proud of the cake.<br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTuxAQs1pI/AAAAAAAAAHE/FK53zO0Q9iQ/s1600-h/Yc_DespedidaCakeMe.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTuxAQs1pI/AAAAAAAAAHE/FK53zO0Q9iQ/s320/Yc_DespedidaCakeMe.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356168382501410450" /></a>Kate, with her traditional middle piece for the guest of honor at any party<br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTuw2b7FnI/AAAAAAAAAG8/67_vYPSWrMU/s1600-h/Z_DespedidaCakeKate.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTuw2b7FnI/AAAAAAAAAG8/67_vYPSWrMU/s320/Z_DespedidaCakeKate.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356168379864127090" /></a><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTuwjSy_WI/AAAAAAAAAG0/i1sHy8Byg9s/s1600-h/Z_DespedidaKateMe.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTuwjSy_WI/AAAAAAAAAG0/i1sHy8Byg9s/s320/Z_DespedidaKateMe.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356168374725573986" /></a><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTuwZJP_vI/AAAAAAAAAGs/iqcoRoPZbeU/s1600-h/Za_DespedidaEquipo.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SlTuwZJP_vI/AAAAAAAAAGs/iqcoRoPZbeU/s320/Za_DespedidaEquipo.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356168372001177330" /></a>Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-57824528510021849072009-05-28T16:06:00.006-06:002009-06-06T13:12:35.531-06:00Seek peace and pursue itIt's starting to feel like home here.<br /> Mentally, I've shifted a little bit away from "OK, just try to adapt to things as they are" and slightly towards "Let's see, what can we do about <em></em>this<em></em>..." I have started to pay attention to my own happines again, and what control I have over it.<br /> Friends help. Visits to or from them help even more! One of my best friends from college, Jennifer, is a PCV in Honduras (what are the odds? Next country over to the east!), and having been a volunteer for six months more than me she had accumulated some vacation time. And she and I plotted to put Guatemala in her travel plans, especially since our mutual friend Ben would be traveling with her. And then Theo came too, another of our best friends volunteering in the eastern part of Guatemala for the school year. What a fun reunion that was! It seemed so implausibly fortunate, the four of us together for a weekend, in a far-fetched corner of this little country, all having come from totally different places. Those are the time that I can almost feel my soul sighing in contentment.<br /> En route to meet up with those three, I stopped in and stayed an evening with Brittany, my good friend from training. As we are both new volunteers adapting to our new town, new work, new family, new life, it was insightful to see how her adapting process was similar to or different from mine. What we have in common are incredibly warm host families, and I already count Doña Horalia and Don Miguel Angel, her host parent, as good friends. For sure, long conversations with and many hugs from Brittany before I hit the road again were wonderfully rejuvenating for me.<br /> The feeling that my work has started to become more meaningful helps lift my spirits too. A lot of that is thanks to Kate, the volunteer whom I am replacing but is still here seeing her projects through to their completion. I think the most meaningful thing I've done so far was the workshop we gave with all the principals in our school district last week, on teaching local biodiversity and conservation in their schools. It all started with Kate's master's degree study of the bird species that inventory before, and it turns out there are 27 species endemic to this region of the altiplano (highlands) of Guatemala (i.e. aren't found anywhere else in the world). And with that information, and the collaboration and inspiration of several local community organizations, a series of educational fliers were made (called "láminas" - the closest analogy I can think of is they're like a page of baseball cards, only with birds or animals as the feature - widely used by teachers and popular as wall decor for kids). The big deal is, no one's ever láminas of <em></em>local<em></em> birds or animals, mostly just the most exotic species the producers can think of, hence generally African or whatnot. The most gratifying feeling came when Kate and I started hearing and seeing these principals get excited about using THESE láminas instead of the others in their classrooms - "It's great that we finally have a resource to teach our students about OUR communal forest, about what is up to US to conserve" - and hearing ideas about other ways these láminas will be used to further local conservation - "These should be put up in every Communal Committee office in the municipality to get people to think before cuting down trees in the communal forest that are the habitat for these rare birds..." I stop and think to myself, YES! <em></em>That<em></em> is what Peace Corps is all about! It took someone like Kate with the expertise and passion (and means of obtaining a budget) to collect this information, but ultimately an idea developed that's been motivated and guided, now about to be forever taken over by, local people who care about the implications. If I can have one project that blossoms into something half as fruitful and inspiring as this one...<br />And maybe that's a little intimidating. It's scary to me that Kate leaves in a months, all her projects wrapped up and me on my own to design new ones and figure out by myself how to work with all the different local committees, regional bodies, and community organizations she has worked so well with for two years. I know I'm incredibly spoiled to have had her example in the first place, much less three months of overlap learning as much as I possibly can from her - that's not normal in Peace Corps, although maybe it should be. Plus it's been nice having a friend around to talk to about everything in our work and community to whom I can relate completely, and she to me.<br /> The fact that she's leaving sank in a little more for both of us when my host family threw Kate the first of possibly many <em></em>despedidas<em></em>, goodbye parties (which doubled as my host dad Arnulfo's early birthday party, and tripled as my belated welcome party.) (And quadrupled as as an excuse for for several aunts, uncles, and their kids who caught wind of it to come crash the party. :) The good news is, I could actually enjoy the food because the anti-amoeba meds are working wonderfully! (Unfortunately, the weight I lost probably due to them is back...haha) And I think I might finally be rid of the fleas, once and for all ... I cannot believe, and neither would you if I told you all the details, what I have had to do to get rid of the damn things. Hooray! It feels good to regain some sense of control in my life. But even as I write that, the words of a greeting card Jennifer used to have on the wall in our old college apartment come back to me and remind me that even when I DON'T feel in control, even when I don't see my friends in a while, even when Kate leaves, even when my projects stagnate, even when the fleas come back, it's alright:<br />"If you hold onto the handle it's easier to maintain the illusion of control ... But it's more fun if you let go and let the wind carry you."Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-81221998570189743482009-05-13T12:52:00.006-06:002009-05-13T13:29:30.071-06:00It’s Raining, It’s Pouring…You know the saying, “when it rains, it pours”? That’s pretty much been my life the last few weeks. For one thing, the rainy season has begun in earnest (“Finally” say the people in my community, for their crops… “Lamentably” says I, even though I know they need the rain). Some mornings are nice and sunny, some mornings are foggy and cold, but inevitably by 5:00 if not earlier the sky has clouded over and it’s pouring. The roads are turning to mud, and the dust problem we had a month ago is a distant memory as all of it has washed away to leave huge holes in the road instead. They’ve been working on getting the road paved from the city up to and past my community, but they’re so behind and it makes for an AWFUL traffic wait. At first it was a dependable no-more-than-two-hour wait, didn’t matter if you were hitching a ride with 15 other people in the back of a pickup and it was pouring rain. Now they’ve got some system by which they close the road for hours to work and let the line of waiting vehicles build and build till they let them all through at one previously-arranged moment. “The cola opens at 2:30 today” is, for example, what one might hear those who are waiting saying to each other, or saying into their cell phones explaining their truancy to whoever’s on the other end of the line (“cola” is a word for tail but also for line). So while the thunder and lightning are fun and watching everything green up and the corn get huge fast is encouraging, the rain is decidedly not my favorite season. I guess I’m just not used to such wetness and all its glitches! I’m sure anyone who’s lived in Seattle or any rainy place is probably laughing at my exasperation with the rainy season, and I’m sure once I’m no longer in it, so will I. Everyone and their uncle’s got a cold, the laundry never dries, shoes and pants are impossible to keep clean (and hence the laundry problem!)… The nastiest of the nasties of this time of year is the intestinal infection, and yes, I fell victim to this one: the rain means everyone’s got to be especially careful with food preparation (rudimentary or no sewage management, rains washing things into crop fields, insufficient cooking or disinfecting of foods… you get where I’m going with that). So in the other sense of the “when it rains it pours” expression, it seems like once one parasite or virus comes along to pester me, along come all the others just to keep the first one company! If it’s not a relapse of fleas, then it’s a cold, or a high fever, or amoebas or other gastrointestinal maladies, or who knows what else! At a certain point you just throw your head back and shout up to heaven, “Why me??” Hehe, yes, we all have our moments like that. The important thing, I know, is to maintain the ability to laugh at yourself through the whole debacle. (I’m working on it – it helped when the big Mother’s Day meal we had with the extended family actually gave everybody gas and indigestion, so we were all sitting around laughing at ourselves while holding our stomachs and trying to figure out whether it was the milk in the mashed potatoes, or that we didn’t add garlic to the veggies, or what!) And it also helps to look for the ways other people do what they can to help me out. My host mom Emiliana, for instance, has been faithfully brewing me a bitter tea to take before every meal to help calm the stomach, and did some of my accumulating laundry for me when I was in bed with fever. My host sister Ixchel has been keeping me company while I iron all my clothes (a final attempt to kill any flea eggs) and brewing me hot lemonade with honey for sore throats when the two of us were sick with colds. The other folks at my work in the park have been awfully kind about letting me stay at home in bed when necessary, asking after me when they cross paths with my family or neighbors. And the Peace Corps Medical staff have been at my beck and call, so Mom: consider your daughter well-supported there. My last entry was about thanking my lucky stars: while they’ve been receiving a little grumbling on the feedback line recently, I guess there are still plenty of reasons in my life right now to thank them.<br /><br /><br />P.S. Some seriously outdated photos... been meaning to get these up for a while.<br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SgsZQDhIKoI/AAAAAAAAAFk/Jwm3FB_qqTE/s1600-h/09-03MarAb+017.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SgsZQDhIKoI/AAAAAAAAAFk/Jwm3FB_qqTE/s320/09-03MarAb+017.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335385947163339394" /></a>My last night in my training town back in March... Lili and I took out the camera, took some last pictures together.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SgscQTsIJqI/AAAAAAAAAGE/cHN4ijSmlu0/s1600-h/09-03MarAb+037.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SgscQTsIJqI/AAAAAAAAAGE/cHN4ijSmlu0/s320/09-03MarAb+037.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335389250039326370" /></a>Patty, Jaime's host sister who became a good friend of mine too, at our Swearing In Ceremony. Hard to say goodbye to such quality people!<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SgscQJ506cI/AAAAAAAAAF8/o8vhRhhgeCo/s1600-h/09-03MarAb+038.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SgscQJ506cI/AAAAAAAAAF8/o8vhRhhgeCo/s320/09-03MarAb+038.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335389247412431298" /></a>Brittany and I, clearly paying close attention to the ceremony... :)<br /><br />And then some first impressions of my new home, when I first arrived:<br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SgscP0itxRI/AAAAAAAAAF0/6pP9dZFDRdE/s1600-h/09-03MarAb+070.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SgscP0itxRI/AAAAAAAAAF0/6pP9dZFDRdE/s320/09-03MarAb+070.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335389241678349586" /></a>The forest of Totonicapán... it's so beautiful!! Pine-oak forest, sun streaming through... I feel right at home, except for the whole mountains concept.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sgsag8kdpfI/AAAAAAAAAFs/ubFXBVfjm5k/s1600-h/09-03MarAb+058.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sgsag8kdpfI/AAAAAAAAAFs/ubFXBVfjm5k/s320/09-03MarAb+058.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335387336867685874" /></a><br />One of many nice sunsets from my house in my little mountain aldea. I´m pretty sure this photo will soon be obsolete as I know I´ve already taken prettier ones, just haven´t gotten 'em to the computer yet!Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-88337283017932320182009-04-29T15:08:00.004-06:002009-04-29T15:52:39.060-06:00<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SfjF381NvlI/AAAAAAAAAFU/P27nVe9rTpw/s1600-h/09-03MarAb+001.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SfjF381NvlI/AAAAAAAAAFU/P27nVe9rTpw/s320/09-03MarAb+001.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5330227724005785170" /></a>This one´s for cousin Nick and my Dad, and I guess everybody on the Roske side who´ll get this joke. Nick, this is in my new city. Dibs, says Sherwin.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SfjF3pOmEHI/AAAAAAAAAFM/lrPGSYEBufI/s1600-h/IMG_0536.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SfjF3pOmEHI/AAAAAAAAAFM/lrPGSYEBufI/s320/IMG_0536.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5330227718743527538" /></a>A photo of us in the hammock of their hostel when Theo, Katie, and Phil visited me in Antigua. Sorry Katie, the only photo I have with you in it is a terrible photo, I´m not putting it up. I mean, not cuz of you... :) hehe<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SfjJf-sul7I/AAAAAAAAAFc/iGG_monOAUg/s1600-h/IMG_5514.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SfjJf-sul7I/AAAAAAAAAFc/iGG_monOAUg/s320/IMG_5514.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5330231710236710834" /></a>A group of us on the steps of the municipal building in Antigua, in town to watch the Sunday afternoon Lenten procession - QUITE a big deal here. This was Theo and Phil's last day of their visit, and friends Rachel, Maria, and Francisco are also pictured. This was also the day my host sisters decided that dressing me up in <em>traje</em> would be fun. I was a little self-conscious, but actually really liked it. I was worried I would offend people, and maybe I did, but mostly people seemed amused or pleasantly surprised to see a foreign muchacha in the <em>corte</em> (skirt) and <em>huipil</em> (woven blouse).<br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SfjDoKKjIQI/AAAAAAAAAFE/x_eaVySqD58/s1600-h/IMG_5515.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SfjDoKKjIQI/AAAAAAAAAFE/x_eaVySqD58/s320/IMG_5515.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5330225253683765506" /></a>My host sister Lili and I. I think she enjoyed herself more with her <em>gringa</em> host sister dressed in <em>traje</em>.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SfjDnhF5LtI/AAAAAAAAAE8/E4tHq5Mutdw/s1600-h/IMG_0519.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SfjDnhF5LtI/AAAAAAAAAE8/E4tHq5Mutdw/s320/IMG_0519.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5330225242658385618" /></a>Jesse, Jaime, and Brittany, some of my good friends from training, around the fire roasting the marshmallows I brought.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SfjDncYqQtI/AAAAAAAAAE0/1pxaCYgnonw/s1600-h/IMG_5753.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SfjDncYqQtI/AAAAAAAAAE0/1pxaCYgnonw/s320/IMG_5753.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5330225241394922194" /></a>The four of us in my training group with Brittany´s host family the day they threw us a small <em>despedida</em>, going-away party: Doña Marina, me, Brittany, Jaime, Maria, and Don Enrique.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SfjDm9CZQtI/AAAAAAAAAEs/8R3y8o1uEnA/s1600-h/IMG_5758.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SfjDm9CZQtI/AAAAAAAAAEs/8R3y8o1uEnA/s320/IMG_5758.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5330225232980034258" /></a>Same group, with their daughter Clara, in front of the little garden in their yard. Such sweet people!<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SfjDmSJFRrI/AAAAAAAAAEk/TaQt1z9OtKA/s1600-h/IMG_5735.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/SfjDmSJFRrI/AAAAAAAAAEk/TaQt1z9OtKA/s320/IMG_5735.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5330225221465360050" /></a>Jaime, Brittany, and I enjoying some free time in Antigua - on a rooftop café with an obviously beautiful view of one of the many volcanoes surrounding the city. One of our last days together!Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-25401557772870235362009-04-20T16:18:00.004-06:002009-04-20T16:47:00.994-06:00<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sez7CT1sjrI/AAAAAAAAAEc/YSK6Ac4lfrI/s1600-h/Guatemala03061.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sez7CT1sjrI/AAAAAAAAAEc/YSK6Ac4lfrI/s320/Guatemala03061.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326908476376256178" /></a><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sez7B6fpIHI/AAAAAAAAAEU/NT56uBx2fEs/s1600-h/Guatemala03059.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sez7B6fpIHI/AAAAAAAAAEU/NT56uBx2fEs/s320/Guatemala03059.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326908469572870258" /></a><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sez7BjOiUTI/AAAAAAAAAEM/OG-akBxvDTs/s1600-h/Guatemala03057.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sez7BjOiUTI/AAAAAAAAAEM/OG-akBxvDTs/s320/Guatemala03057.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326908463327105330" /></a><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sez5BEDvlkI/AAAAAAAAAEE/CXMnQsAgG84/s1600-h/Guatemala03056.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sez5BEDvlkI/AAAAAAAAAEE/CXMnQsAgG84/s320/Guatemala03056.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326906255937082946" /></a><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sez5A-_KGBI/AAAAAAAAAD8/Z3sVeCndUyE/s1600-h/Guatemala03049.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sez5A-_KGBI/AAAAAAAAAD8/Z3sVeCndUyE/s320/Guatemala03049.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326906254575671314" /></a><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sez5ApH733I/AAAAAAAAAD0/uC1RgFSBPW8/s1600-h/Guatemala03039.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sez5ApH733I/AAAAAAAAAD0/uC1RgFSBPW8/s320/Guatemala03039.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326906248706908018" /></a><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sez5Afxe8kI/AAAAAAAAADs/IBziT3KkT14/s1600-h/Guatemala03033.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sez5Afxe8kI/AAAAAAAAADs/IBziT3KkT14/s320/Guatemala03033.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326906246196818498" /></a><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sez2iD0hjAI/AAAAAAAAADk/BbuR_4EeH7c/s1600-h/Guatemala03026.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sez2iD0hjAI/AAAAAAAAADk/BbuR_4EeH7c/s320/Guatemala03026.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326903524274048002" /></a><br />Maya ceremony we went to - Amanda and Erin helping organize the candles. <br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sez2h3gi0ZI/AAAAAAAAADc/zKDRpNvhTGo/s1600-h/Guatemala03018.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sez2h3gi0ZI/AAAAAAAAADc/zKDRpNvhTGo/s320/Guatemala03018.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326903520969019794" /></a><br />host fam photo no. 2<br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sez2hnI_e8I/AAAAAAAAADU/XFIHMRalzIk/s1600-h/Guatemala03017.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sez2hnI_e8I/AAAAAAAAADU/XFIHMRalzIk/s320/Guatemala03017.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326903516575267778" /></a><br />host fam photo no. 1<br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sez2hf7ERoI/AAAAAAAAADM/6nW5-vQocFM/s1600-h/Guatemala03007.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qWQta_IHFEI/Sez2hf7ERoI/AAAAAAAAADM/6nW5-vQocFM/s320/Guatemala03007.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326903514637813378" /></a><br />small group pizza night in Antigua - this is kinda old, mid-training when we were living near AntiguaMolly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-86584327041899213302009-04-20T16:17:00.000-06:002009-04-20T16:18:02.423-06:00Lucky StarsLife is good. Can somebody send me one of those T-shirts that say that? (haha, kidding… better if you can find it in Spanish!)<br />Since I moved to Totonicapán 3 weeks ago, I have felt much more “in my element” than I have yet in this country, and I feel pretty satisfied with life. Firstly, my work in the park has picked up speed: I have officially become a guide capable of taking groups on our Sendero (trail/path) and giving our environmental ed curriculum at the various stations (although talking ecological concepts while using non-formal methods of participatory learning, and maintaining group safety in the forest, all in Spanish, is still kind of kicking my butt). This happened last weekend, when 300 Guatemalans belonging to the Church of Latter Day Saints (i.e. the Mormons) showed up and wanted the schpiel on the trail in groups of 50. We had Luís (1 of our 2 Guatemalan guides) and Kate (the current volunteer) available the give it. And me, who had never even done a practice run, although I had tagged along before to listen to the others give the talks. But hey, might as well jump in! And although for many of the reasons described above I felt awkward and nervous, in some strange way I felt like I was back on my home turf! Here I was, setting off with another group of visitors to a protected wilderness area, to tell them all about the ecology of this area, do some fun activities with them, and hope they’ve learned something when we’re finished. It wasn’t perfect, but it went well and, more importantly, everybody had fun and probably learned something.<br />And speaking of jumping in, last week was also Promotion Week – meaning Yovani and Luís and I drove around for 2 whole days visiting school after school to advertise my park’s environmental education program (which we call the Sendero Ecológico). We’d drive up, walk in and ask where the Director’s office (i.e. principal) was, and give a schpiel about the Sendero, how it benefits both the kids and the teachers to come and have us talk natural science and ecology with the students, how we tailor it to age groups, it fits within the national education curriculum, etc. Then the Director or Directora usually hems and haws, might sound excited, might talk about how the Parent Association probably won’t approve such and excursion, depends on the person. But after a few of these visits, Yovani turned to me as we were getting out of the car at yet another school, hands me the binder and says, “Your turn!” Ah… what? “Yovani, you sure you want the gringa with her so-so Spanish being the first impression these Directors get of the quality of our park??” But I knew he was right, so I did the talking at the next school, and hey – the Directora really liked the sound of our project! I think she’ll organize a student visit for sure.<br />So far I haven’t really gotten a feel for potential projects of my own yet, but I’m not really suppose to yet either. And for now, Kate has several projects in process, so I’ve been learning a lot just from hopping in on those. For instance, Kate has been working on a Master’s Thesis study of the endemic birds of the Totonicapán area, and I’ve been tagging along many of the mornings when she goes out to her points in the forest to listen for bird calls, record sightings, vegetation, etc. This is a great way for me to learn all the local bird species, as there are about 94 that Kate has recorded in this area and at least 27 of them are endemic to the altiplano of Guatemala. Why does this region have so many bird species? Because the community of Totonicapán is famous in Guatemala for its communal forest, and therefore birds have habitat here. For centuries the people in this area have collectively owned and sustainably used a huge expanse of humid montane coniferous forest. There are over 16,000 hectares of communal forest, plus 4,000 more of “parcialidades” which are private parcels owned by extended family groups (everyone with the last name “Tash”, for instance). If you’ve ever visited Guatemala, you’ll know that deforestation is pretty high, especially in non-tourist areas, so the mere existence of miles and miles and miles of intact, ancient forest is astonishing. This is another reason environmental education with the schools in this area is so important: if the next generation is to care for and justly manage the resources in this communal forest, they need to start understanding why the forest’s existence is so important. Not just for ecological purposes, but for their own livelihoods and their children’s future. That said, another of Kate’s projects that just finished up last week was a training course for local young people in concepts and practices of Resource Conservation and Tourism Guiding. It was so cool to watch and listen to these young Guatemalans get so excited learning about the local species, brainstorm ways they can improve trash management in their family’s zones of the communal forest, master simple phrases in English for the day tourists come, etc. Because one addition incentive for keeping the forest intact is that it could seriously provide some tourism income – and of course, that won’t happen overnight, but the youths understand that they’d need to put in some infrastructure and advertising legwork before foreigners are going to just fall out of the sky. That was really a neat project to get to help out with, and I hope to continue working with these newly-trained guides in the future.<br />And every day when I leave the park to walk home, I walk through some of that communal forest and thank the powers that be for sending me here, where on that walk home I listen to the wind in the enormous, ancient pines, hear the crunch of needles under my feet, and breathe deep as that wonderful pine scent fills my lungs. And when I get home our puppy Ginger (they let me name her, even though the name Ginger is hard for them to say) greets me romping and chewing my pant leg, and all three of my young host siblings are usually doing homework but look up excitedly and expect a story from me as I walk in the door. I chat with my host mom Emiliana and her mom Abuelita Paulina as we get dinner ready, and I must say I’ve missed quite a few phone calls in the evenings as post-dinner chatting, especially with my host dad once he gets home later, has been keeping us all up sitting around the kitchen table till about 10 or 10:30 every night. But that’s not a complaint, really – I wouldn’t have it any other way. I am thanking my lucky stars.Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-83677295620451557832009-04-14T17:37:00.004-06:002009-04-20T16:15:07.499-06:00Tis the (Easter) Season…A journal entry from Saturday, April 11:<br />Today was such a great "Peace Corps" day. Mostly in the non-work-related sense, I guess I have to admit, because though the park I work in was absolutely crawling with Guatemalans on their Holy Saturday holiday, I didn´t feel very useful - too new to know how the park handles so many people (I think this is how anybody new on the job is bound to feel.) I learned a lot though. <br />But today when my host mom Emiliana and host dad Arnulfo came with the whole family in the back of the toyota pickup to get me for an extended-family picnic lunch, it was as if I were among my own aunts and uncles and cousins. It´s so strange how at home I feel here with them! We explored caves, we jumped rope forever, and the food itself was pretty similar to what we Roskes might´ve had at a family picnic. The chatter of aunts and the rambunctiousness of the cousins was so familiar! But I guess the emphasis here should be less on how similar it felt, because of course it was completely different; the point is moreso that I already feel like I could belong, eventually. There were so many moments when I thought, I should have my camera for this, I really want to remember this... jumping rope with the kids but especially when the adults joined in, running around with the toddler Irene and thinking up all the possible imaginary uses for the sticks she found for us, hearing my little host brother Hugo explain my name over and over to his cousin (even though the only time I ever hear Hugo say my name is when he says thanks after meals), sitting and chatting with Emiliana and her sisters tía Rosa and tía María in the shade of the big cypress tree as the sun was slanting beautifully through the giant pines, the needles drifting down to join the laughter below. This family reunion ranks (not that it´s a competition, oh actual family members reading this) among my favorites, though it wasn´t even my family! Well, it is now, in a way.<br />And I guess I can´t totally write off work today. As I was collecting garbage with Doña Delfina at the end of the day I started talking with an older woman who had come with her family all the way from the capital. While her complaints about our rudimentary bathrooms made me at first write her off as a high-maintenance, non environmental type, I soon realized I shouldn´t have judged so quickly. She and her elderly mother and I talked and talked about why they had come all this way to our little private park, that they value the space and the existence of a clean and healthy natural area. They get it! We talked about the problem of trash management for a while, because they sympathized with me walking around bent over for an hour cleaning up other people´s mess, and they were so adamant that what we´re doing in our park is reallyimportant. They were so encouraging to me personally, that I´m in Guatemala working hard on something like this, it simultaneously humbled me and made me proud of myself. And thankful that by pure serendipity I stumbled upon this great conversation with these two older ladies. Sometimes, I am amazed at the way human beings can connect with each other, under such unlikely circumstances, if we´re open to the possibility.<br />Same goes for the evening I spent at the home of Don Nico (our park guard) and his wife Doña Delfina, after the three of us had cleaned up the park and walked home. They are my neighbors now that I live up the mountain in the village near the park. I told them I didn´t mind walking the extra little bit past my house down the mountain to theirs, to help carry things the rest of the way, though I knew that meant I´d be staying for a little while. I didn´t realize that "a little while" actually meant I´d take my leave three mugs-full of coffee and two huge Semana Santa breadrolls later. But I had such a pleasant time with them. Either I´m getting the hang of social graces in the different social spheres that exist here in Guatemala or it´s simply that this family, parents and all those kids, are just good people. It´s amazing how good people can be found anywhere in the world - I´ve decided the planet is absolutely full of good people like Don Nico´s family, who will send the aunt and the 8-yr-old daughter to walk with you in the dark up the mountain to your house, one clinging to each arm as we ascend the mountain in the dark, unable to see our feet but walking in sync anyway as we watch the brilliant stars instead. The evening ends with many hugs and kisses and "Adios"es and "Cuídese"s, and I am left with a heart that overfloweth.Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1070086832577427675.post-13267347903710050442009-03-28T15:46:00.004-06:002009-04-20T16:15:56.279-06:00Swearing-InI woke up and realized that today was the day: I officially become a Peace Corps Volunteer when I raise my right hand and solemnly swear to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to uphold my duties as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Kind of a strange oath given the job description, but it's the same one Joe Biden swore in on, so why not us?<br />I packed up the last of my things, pulled the sheets off my bed and stuffed them in my backpack, and walked out of my room for the last time. I crossed the small lawn to the kitchen where the hot water for the coffee wasn't going to be hot in time, so for the first time my host mom and sister-in-law let me just take a few sweet buns without coffee to dunk them in. A pretty big deal, that.<br />The time had come for hurried goodbyes - I stood and walked around the table to put my arm on my host mom's shoulder, as is customary here (hugs are not). I said once again how thankful I was to her for how well I was cared for and welcomed into the family routine, and was sorry to have to leave and find a new family to live with now in Totonicapán. She said it was never a bother and, as she started to cry, thanked me for always eating whatever they prepared for me, and for coming with to pray for her sick father, and for always being polite and greeting everyone. I started to cry too.<br />After more last-minute parting gifts of bread and fruit for my journey, I walked down the hill through town to my best friend and fellow volunteer Brittany's house, where she and her host parents were waiting for me. Together the four of us in our nicest clothes boarded the chicken bus to Antigua, where the Peace Corps was waiting for all the new volunteers and their host families to take us to the US Ambassador's house in Guatemala City. On that bus, on both American and Guatemalan minds were thoughts of the big changes today was bringing. While my host family couldn't accept the honor of attending the Swearing-In Ceremony at the Ambassador's house due to tending to the sick grandfather, most other host parents were present, riding the bus with their respective Volunteers for probably the last time. We've lived with these families for three months, and some bonds have been formed. But unlike the other host families on the bus that morning, Brittany's host parents, Don Enrique and Doña Maria, have never hosted any Americans before, much less been to any ambassador's house. I think they were a bit more excited but also more nervous than the rest.<br />The Ambassador's house was beautiful, as is I suppose to be expected. The back lawn has space for maybe three large games of croquet, plus gardens everywhere, a fountain, tennis courts, and a pool. Don Enrique asked me if my house in los Estados Unidos was like this one. I laughed out loud at the thought, then apologized for laughing and explained reality in America.<br />There was much speech-making in Spanish, and I realized how far we've all come in three months that none of us have any trouble at all anymore understanding what's being said. We took our oath as prompted by the Ambassador, and then one by one were called up to receive our diplomas. (Diplomas? Really? I completed the Peace Corps training... that doesn't feel like it really merits a diploma, but whatever floats their boat...) Figures that the one day I will probably ever wear a dress in Guatemala, the wind picks up when I go forward to get my diploma and have my picture taken with the Ambassador, and I end up pulling something like a Marilyn Monroe moment. :)<br />There was much picture taking and snack eating afterwards, and soon the idyllic day had to come to and end when the bus returned to take us back. Goodbyes were long and often tearful; promises were made of phone calls, pictures in the mail, and future visits. Man, if moving away from our host families is this hard after three months, how will I possibly handle leaving my new community after two years? We're officially Volunteers now, and we head out to those new communities tomorrow morning, to begin what will be our lives for the next two years. These changes, all the goodbyes recently said and all the hello’s in the near future, prompt a lot of pondering about friendships and the ties that bind us to the hearts of the other people in our lives. How will I do at maintaining those ties into my hazy future? Lots of changes mean lots of questions.Molly Roskehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09660099314998145763noreply@blogger.com1